


The Edge of Seventeen

by Khirsah



Category: Avengers Academy, Young Avengers
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, Limbo, M/M, Multi, Not Really Character Death, Supervillains, They get better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 23:00:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khirsah/pseuds/Khirsah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he wondered, if he found a way to reach out to sixteen-year-old him, would he believe he’d eventually come to this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Edge of Seventeen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cris-Art](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Cris-Art).



> **Warnings/Triggers:** This story contains the death of a young child and a major character. Both characters will be brought back in part 2 (I don’t do unhappy endings). It also deals with the mass murder of the Skrull empire. So, heavy stuff here. Please be warned.
> 
>  **Notes:** This story got out of hand quickly. I consider this a complete standalone chapter; there will be one more chapter with a happy ending. I feel like I need to stress the _happy ending_ part. Cris, I don’t know why your happy family picture drew this out of me, but I hope you’re in the mood for angst.
> 
> All my love to Caterpills. You were, as always, right about everything.
> 
>  
> 
> **This story was written for the 2013 Young Avengers Reverse Big Bang.**

“So with the slow, graceful flow  
Of age  
I went forward with an age-old desire to please:  
On the edge of seventeen.”  
— **The Edge of Seventeen** , Stevie Nicks

**

**Teddy**

**

“I’ve got someone on my six,” Captain Marvel called. He switched directions midair, zigging, zagging, trying to vary his pattern the way long years of experience had taught him. No matter what he did, the dark figure remained dogging his heels. He twisted to get a good look at his pursuer just in time to spot a green hand lift, the central flare of an energy gun discharge.

_Well. Crap._

There was a flare of pain high on his shoulder; it branched through his nervous system with a buzzing jolt. “Going down!” Marvel flattened useless wings against his spine. The sudden dive made his stomach lurch, wind burning his eyes. He grit his teeth against the instinctual urge to try to break his own fall, trusting his team to rally behind him.

Lightning forked overhead. A familiar cocky voice spoke in his ear. “Well, can you _blame_ him? You’ve got quite a six, Teddy.”

“That’s Marvel on the field, Feedback,” he said, twisting midair. The Skrull was caught in a cage of flickering electricity, green scales bleeding a mottled brown, then surging bright red, maroon, blue as he desperately shifted. “Careful. We don’t want to fry him. Still falling here, by the way.”

“I’ve got you!” Strong hands caught him beneath his pits and Marvel braced himself against the bone-jarring lurch as his freefall was broken. They sagged for a moment, jerking against momentum and gravity before his would-be savior caught her balance again, pulling out of the hasty nosedive.

Flying under someone else’s power always ( _always_ ) felt like the worst kind of trust exercise, but he couldn’t let them see him flinch. Not today; not facing Skrull. It’d be far too easy for them to draw all the wrong conclusions. “Thanks,” he said, scanning the field as they flew. Hawkeye had three-quarters of the team _plus_ a majority of Xavier’s on the other side of the coast, fighting endless waves of Unseeing Ones. That’s where the real battle was. This was _nothing_. This was one sad, bedraggled unit of Skrulls going kamikaze, trying to take out the great enemy in a desperate blaze of glory. The once-great empire barely had the firepower to take on the mansion’s skeleton crew. God, what it had all come to.

 _No hesitation_ , he told himself firmly. _Not today_.

“It’ll take a few minutes for the charge to work its way through me—put me somewhere where I can get a bird’s eye view?” 

Sunburst looked down with a crooked, earnest smile. Her eyemask had been ripped away, long rainbow hair streaming in the unnaturally strong breeze. The multi-color shimmer of her powers extended below them, cutting through the smog-choked Manhattan air. “Sure, boss,” she said. She shifted her grip and changed their angle of ascent, moving toward the topmost spire of the Woolworth building. Marvel reached out to snag a gargoyle by the beak, hoisting himself up even as Sunburst let go. His suit creaked and whirred in protest, and he could _feel_ his powers rippling in the aftershocks of the energy ray.

“Dang it,” he muttered, clenching and unclenching his fist. He tried to form a claw, talons, anything, but his powers had been fried. “No, I’m fine,” he added when Sunburst made an anxious loop over him. “It’ll just take a few for everything to reboot. Get on out there before Feedback racks up the casualties.”

She glanced over her shoulder with a low hiss. “Brandon wouldn’t _dare_ ,” she said. “It’s not like the universe can afford to lose any more Skrull.”

Marvel managed to keep the wince off his face. She didn’t mean it as a pointed dig; he _knew_ she didn’t. Still.

 _Still_.

“Intercept,” he said, carefully securing himself on the ledge. “Feedback knows better, but he’s been getting careless lately. Haven’t you, Feedback?”

“What’s that, boss?” The lightning show was over, save for occasional flickers boxing in the exhausted-looking Skrull captive. They were on a rooftop two streets away, but Marvel could see the black-and-white figure of his mouthiest teammate (and that was taking _Tommy_ into account) turn toward them. He could practically feel Feedback’s eyes on him, even at this distance. “Are you and Sunburst talking about how flat-out awesome I am? I knew you’d notice eventually.”

Sunburst rolled her eyes and, arching like a dolphin seeking deeper water, dove toward the her teammate. Marvel scanned the field, wishing (not for the first time) he had Hawkeye’s visor. They’d been scattered wide by the assault, blown across the full width of Manhattan. Off toward the memorial, Paladin was handily bringing down a duo of Skrull commandos. Feedback and Sunburst were now hovering over their own captive; he could hear them bickering whenever he allowed the neural-audio implant to register their raised voices. Down at ground level, surrounded by a growing throng of onlookers, Laura X was crouched between two suspiciously still figures. Her head was tipped up as if she, too, were listening in on her teammates.

Marvel focused on the Skrull laying insensate on either side of her. Two dead. Two dead out of such a small raiding party.

 _No_ , he thought, hands clenching into fists. _No, call it what it is. They’re not raiders; they don’t want to take anything from this. This is revenge. Justified hatred._ The bodies looked…God, so small. He could only hope that was a result of perspective; he was seeing them from up high, he was far away. Surely those weren’t _kids_ down there.

 _Murderers_ , he thought. _Perpetrators of the greatest genocide of our time—that’s how they see us, and God help us, they’re not wrong._

He expelled a breath and tried to shake his thoughts clear. He couldn’t dwell on that now; now he had a job to do. It didn’t matter that the battle had been short and easy ( _kids; God_ ) and something even the Avenger’s skeleton crew could handle in its sleep: he had a responsibility to his team. Marvel gripped the neck of the gargoyle and leaned over the ledge, scanning the battle radius again. Sunburst and Feedback, Paladin, Laura X. That left one more.

“Check in, Scythe.”

He focused, hearing only static. “Scythe, come in.” Nothing. “Report.” Nothing.

_Shit._

Radio silence could mean Scythe was in trouble. Of course, it could also mean he’d taken out his earpiece, or he’d flown too close to a reception tower, or who knew what else. Marvel’s brow puckered as he carefully inched around the building’s ledge to try to get a better view. The gothic architecture provided plenty of spires and carvings for his grip, but it had been raining in New York all week and the green pitched roof was slick beneath his heavy tred. “Sunburst, can you spot Scythe?”

There was a rainbow flare out of the corner of his eye, followed by the blue-white crackle of lightning. “Did he go off radio _again_?” she sighed. “I’ll go—”

“Shit, negative, negative on that!” The flare of lightning intensified, spiking oddly.

“Report!” Marvel snapped. The crackle and whine of Feedback’s powers almost overwhelmed the sound of his cursing.

“We’ve got it, Cap!” Sunburst called, then, “Ow! Brandon, _pin him_.”

“I’m _trying_ , Karo! What do you think I’m doing here, having a _tickle fight_?”

Marvel focused, trying to make his wings unfold—trying to do anything—but his nervous system was still dulled by the energy pulse; he was _useless_. “Do you need backup?” he said, not letting the tension bleed into his voice. He wasn’t doing such a hot job today. He was off his game. It was the Skrull; it was all the memories fighting to take over. He felt like he was being dragged down by them. He felt like time had been trapped in amber and he was caught at its core, slow and sad and fighting ineffectually to rejoin the world. It had been like that now and again ever since the battle to take down the Sorcerer Supreme.

Ever since the battle to take down his _husband_.

_Not now, Teddy._

He dug his nails into his palms, forcing himself to concentrate past the memories, past the darkness that always seemed poised ready to take him. He had a _job_ to do. And it didn’t matter if these were Skrull come to die trying to take down the team that had unwittingly harbored a mass murderer; it didn’t matter if this was personal, if this touched a nerve, if this…if this _hurt_ , slicing him down to the core. It didn’t _matter_.

His team was what mattered. The job was what mattered. He had to remember that or he’d be lost, too.

“….gative, Cap. We’ve got it under control.”

“Spotted Scythe.” Laura X’s clipped voice brought him up short. “He’s going to get himself in trouble.”

Teddy’s head jerked up. “Where?” Then, “Can you get to him?”

“Not without leaving these bodies to the mob.”

“What do you see?” He began carefully climbing around the slippery, sloped roof, still mostly numb fingers curled around the various handholds created by the ornate gothic architecture. Teddy scanned the skyline even has he bore down on his powers, trying to force them to react past the dull buzz of the inhibitor. _Damn it_.

Laura’s voice was a low monotone in his ear. “Southwest. He has engaged three hostiles. They are flanking him now; he is being reckless.” As if that were some sort of surprise. “One of them has a disruptor gun.”

Which meant if Scythe wasn’t very careful—which he almost never was—then his suit and powers would get shorted too. It was one of the powersuit’s main drawbacks: they allowed flight and firepower and limited protection for all of the Avengers no matter their skill set, but David had to constantly upgrade Jarvis to keep enemies from finding ways to get past the firewalls.

“Scythe,” he said again, voice roughening. “ _Scythe_.” Teddy scanned the skyline, squinting against the glare of light on chrome and glass—and spotted a dark figure weaving recklessly through the air. 

He was going _fast_ , eating up power by cannibalizing his suit’s shields to boost his speed, no doubt. It was the sort of stunt Tommy pulled all the time, but Tommy at least had the good sense to be aware of what was going on around him. Scythe was shouting something jubilant, spinning like a top with two hostiles on his tail.

The third, Teddy saw with a sinking stomach, was hidden on a workman’s ledge directly in Scythe’s flight path, hiding. _Waiting_ while his teammates herded the stupid son a bitch right into their trap.

“ _SCYTHE!_ ” he bellowed; his voice echoed over the steady whoosh of the wind and the distant drone of downtown traffic. Scythe actually looked up, sunlight glinting off his goggles, face split into a shit-eating grin.

He couldn’t hear the disruptor discharging, but he could _see_ it, see the blare of light shooting toward the younger man. Teddy didn’t pause to think—he let go of his handhold and _leapt_ into the air, trusting his powers to burn through the disruptor’s lingering effects, trusting himself to force through this minor setback and _make it_ there on time. Scythe was an idiot, but he was an idiot under Teddy’s protection and Teddy was not going to stand by and watch him die. Not while he drew breath.

And for a minute, he thought it was actually going to work. His wings unfurled, snapping wide to catch the breeze even as he saw Scythe take the blast right to the face. Teddy grit his teeth and grabbed for the gun he kept clipped to his utility belt; he couldn’t trust the suit to respond quickly enough, and oh God, he was— He was _falling_ , wings freezing up for an awkward moment. Teddy slipped into freefall _again_ , twisting on his way down and aiming for the Skrull. He hit his mark, sending him sprawling, and managed to get his wings moving again, but everything was happening so quickly, too quickly. Scythe, Scythe, where the hell was Scythe?

“Captain!” Scythe screamed; he could _hear_ him, voice distorted by white noise but still there. Teddy grit his teeth and fought past the pain, wings spreading, stroking the air. He spotted Scythe dangling from the lip of a skyscraper; glass shattered as his spasmodically jerking legs hit the windows, but he was holding on despite the clear fear and anguish on his face. There was blood dripping down his chin. The two remaining Skrull were fast approaching.

Teddy dove for them, aiming and firing. He could see a rainbow-colored flash off to his right as Sunburst hurried to join the fray. Laura X’s steady voice was saying, “Paladin, your assistance is required,” even as Teddy closed the last bit of distance. The gun wasn’t going to be much good face-on against shields, so he did the next best thing: swooping in, wings flattening, he aimed the gun at the first Skrull’s head and threw it with all his strength. It spun, tip over butt, and smacked the kid right between the eyes.

The other was hit by a streak of rainbow color as Sunburst gave a triumphant, “TAKE THAT!”

He didn’t wait to reassess the situation. Teddy grabbed for the momentarily stunned Skrull and turned him midair, slamming his face against the ledge Scythe was desperately dangling from. The Skrull resisted, hissing, so he slammed him forward again, then again, just to make sure. When the kid’s body went lax in his grip, Teddy caught him by the pits and dragged him up, laying the unconscious form across the ledge. Then he grabbed for Scythe’s wrist and hauled him to safety.

Scythe cursed and scowled; he wrenched himself free the moment his feet touched concrete. “Thanks a fucking lot,” he snarled.

This again. “What is your problem?” Teddy demanded. Then, “No, now isn’t the time. Wait here until the disruptor beam works its way through you; I’ll come back for you once—”

He wasn’t expecting Scythe to swipe at him, lips curled back in a snarl. Teddy pulled away sharply, wings flaring, just out of range. “What the _hell_?”

“I don’t need you to babysit me! I can _do_ this just fine on my own.”

There was a hell of a lot he could say to that, but he swallowed back the flash of ire and tried to be reasonable. “We’ll discuss that later, at debrief,” he said. Then, “We’re a team, Scythe; there’s no shame in needing a teammate’s help.”

“Maybe I just don’t want _your_ help. Maybe I’m tired of perfect Captain Marvel telling me what to do. Maybe you can go fuck yourself. Or _maybe_ you can go join your supervillain _husband_ in his _prison_ and stop acting like you’re some kind of Goddamned golden _hero_. How about that?”

He closed his eyes against the dull throb at his temples. This again. No, of course; _of course_ , today of all days, this again. “Scythe,” Teddy began, wanting to reach out to clasp the other man’s shoulder. “I’m sorry if—”

He never got to finish.

Teddy saw a flash of movement in his peripheral vision; he saw the bright glow of a disruptor as the first Skrull, the one he’d shot, rolled clear on the workman’s ledge below and pulled the trigger. “ _Get down_!” Teddy bellowed, shoving Scythe back. He was inches away from the ledge himself, almost there—easily within Scythe’s reach—when he felt the beam hit. It rocketed through him like a lightning bolt; his heart _lurched_ in response, and he actually hung suspended for a millisecond that somehow felt like forever, that felt like time the way Tommy experienced it, just…staring into Scythe’s eyes in shock. Scythe didn’t move to catch him.

And then he was slipping away, moving into freefall for the third time that day.

It was strange; it was a wild rush somehow slowed to three-quarter speed. He’d been a superhero for so long that he could take the measure of a battleground even as it evolved around him. His brain was wired to see all the details, even as he fell helplessly to his death.

Scythe leaning over the ledge, watching Teddy fall with shocked dismay transmutating into horror.

A fierce crack of lightning—Brandon—too far away to do more than bear witness.

Laura X shouting through the earpiece, “The Captain’s falling; someone _catch him_ ,” as she blasted into the air, leaving the bodies of the Skrull to the throng of onlookers.

Rainbow light far, far above and Karo’s choked cry, “Jeanne, _do something_. I’m not—”

“I can’t get there in—”

“ _Someone_!”

No one was close enough to catch him, Teddy realized. He didn’t feel panicked at the thought—there was no time for panic. No space for it. He just felt weightless, staring up at the New York skyline, feeling the wind whipping against his cheeks, knowing the ground was coming soon and able to do nothing but _accept_ it.

 _You’re going to die_ , he thought, then _you should say something to them_. His team would blame themselves. Scythe would blame himself. He opened his mouth, but the words caught in his throat—God, what were you supposed to say the moment before you died?—and when he closed his eyes, all he could see was Billy. Billy in his deep red robe, turning with a wide grin, little Sophia in his arms. His home. His family.

They were his _family_.

“Tell Billy—” Teddy managed, forcing the words past his lips.

He smashed into the pavement half a breath later and died with the screams of his teammates ringing in his ears.

**

**Karo**

**

She couldn’t stop shaking.

Brandon was pacing like a madman, tearing up the worn floorboards. They hadn’t changed out of their uniforms—none of them had. It was as if they were reluctant to change anything. As if they were poised on the edge of that moment, that fall, hoping against all logic that it could all go back to the way it was before.

That Teddy could—

Karo turned her face away, one hand covering her mouth to hold back the low, keening cry.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Brandon snarled. He dragged his fingers through his hair, electricity crackling over his skin. “No, don’t you dare start; he’s going to be fine. We’ll drag Foley’s sorry ass up here and he’ll _bring Teddy back_ and it’ll all be _fine_. You’ll see.”

Laura was perched on the table, dark hair falling into her thin face. “No one knows where Foley is,” she said.

“So we’ll track him down!”

Karo tried to drown them out. She couldn’t stand to witness Brandon’s slow, messy unraveling. It was selfish of her—God, it was so selfish—but she just _couldn’t_. Not now. Not when it was still so fresh. When she closed her eyes, she could still see him falling.

She pulled up her knees and buried her face against her thighs.

“All this is immaterial.” Jeanne’s voice cut through the increasingly heated argument. “It doesn’t matter where Foley is or whether he could or could not bring the Captain back. He signed a DNR, remember?”

Karo wrapped her arms around her legs and fought the sob wanting to spill out of her. Brandon snarled, “ _Fuck_ the DNR! This is Teddy you’re fucking talking about!”

“I know who the Captain is, Brandon. That doesn’t change the fact that—”

“Where is Scythe? Where is that motherfucker; I am going to _gut_ him.”

“—he is dead and he has no desire to be brought back by any extraordinary means, magical, temporal, or otherwise. That is what the DNR means, and you can’t expect—”

“Why are you still talking, you Goddamned _robot_? Jarvis! Why the fuck isn’t Jarvis online? We need to, we should, _fuck_ , we should just… _Fuck_. We can’t just sit here and do nothing. It’s _Teddy_.”

“—us to go against his wishes simply because you are harboring inappropriate feelings for a married man that—”

Karo jerked to her feet, powers flaring around her in a brilliant corona. The room went silent, as if she’d cast a pall over them. “I’m,” she said, scrubbing at her face. She couldn’t get the image of him falling out of her mind. “I’m… Someone should call Hawkeye. Kate. Someone should call Kate and let her know. And maybe… Maybe someone should let _him_ know, before he finds out on his own.”

 _Him_.

The Sorcerer Supreme. Billy Kaplan-Altman.

Jeanne went very still. Laura slid off the table, knuckles gone white. “I’ll track down Scythe,” she said, voice low. “We’ll go into hiding, just in case.”

“It won’t do any good,” Jeanne pointed out. “If the Sorcerer wants him dead, he’ll be dead. It doesn’t matter where you hide.”

“I am very good at hiding. Should I take the Skrull captives with me? Teddy wouldn’t want them hurt.”

Karo whirled away and stumbled for the door; she couldn’t bear to hear them working out the details. She couldn’t bear to think—

 _Focus_ , she told herself, shutting the door to muffle Brandon’s raised voice; he was still arguing for Foley, for bringing Teddy back even as Laura and Jeanne planned to protect those responsible from the wrath of his estranged husband. _You’re not a kid anymore_. She didn’t feel like an adult, though. Right now, pressed against the closed door with a hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks, she felt all of sixteen, staring down at the body of her friend ( _Gert, God, no, it isn’t possible_ ) and feeling like her world was ending.

In a way, she supposed it was.

How could the Avengers go on when the Captain was dead?

**

**Kate**

**

 _A shower_ , Kate thought, dragging off her helmet and tucking it under her arm. _That’s what I need. A shower, a change of clothes, and a nice, big bed._

She was exhausted. Her team had been on high alert for forty-eight straight hours now, fighting wave after wave of an enemy that seemed to have no end. There weren’t many lags. This one, she had decided after leaving Witness in charge of the field, would just have to be long enough for her to recharge.

“Jarvis,” she called, stepping into the temporary shelter. It hummed to life the moment the AI sensed her presence. Jarvis—named in honor of Edwin Jarvis—had been installed in all four mansions across the coast as well as their mobile base of operations and their powersuits. The generators weren’t as strong here, however, so he didn’t respond with his characteristic polite greeting; she found that she desperately missed his voice when she was away. “One dinner…let’s make it turkey…and a new powersuit, please. I’ll be washing the stink off if anyone comes looking for me.”

The floor thrummed under her feet as she moved back toward the large locker room and began to strip down. The tiles were warm, welcoming. She curled her bare toes against them, tossing her boots into a pile at the foot of her locker, and fought the overwhelming urge to just lay down and go to sleep here. She sighed and leaned against the cool metal for a moment, letting her head drop forward. Christ, but her shoulders ached. Her whole _body_ was one big bruise.

Classical music ticked on and the shower started by itself. Kate grinned as she slowly straightened. “Oh, you charmer,” she said, stripping off her gloves. The rest of the suit was easy enough, hidden latches holding the disparate pieces together. She sighed and made herself carefully set aside the breastplate at least before grabbing the hem of her shirt and tugging it over her head. The underarmor stuck to her skin with dried sweat; Kate groaned as it peeled away. “I’m suddenly really glad you can’t smell me.”

She kicked off her underwear on her way to the big bank of showers, feet slapping against the warmed tiles. The showerheads moved as she stepped past the glass door, tracking her motions—a hot, hard spray hit her between the shoulder blades as she turned, while another misted over her front much more gently. She could feel Jarvis adjusting the pressure as she rolled her shoulders and let her head drop forward. A deep, massaging stream hit right where neck met shoulders, kneading at the too-tight muscle.

“Oh, God,” she moaned, staggering a step. The showerheads moved to follow her, hot water hitting _exactly_ where she needed it most. “You’re a saint.” Machinery whirred quietly as the white tile wall shifted, a square crack appearing midway down, and a low bench pressed forward. Kate laughed—she hadn’t known Jarvis could do that here—and moved to the bench. It was covered in ceramic tiles and contoured to fit the natural shape of a reclining body. When she reached down to touch it, warmth and the low thrum of electricity made her palms tingle in response. “No, I take that back,” Kate said, crawling onto the bench. “You are a _god_.”

She sprawled there, eyes closed, water sluicing away long hours of battle, massaging away her aches, and listened to the crescendo of their music with a soft smile; even if he couldn’t speak here, she could hear his voice in everything he did.

Kate had no idea how long she stayed there, half dozing on the ceramic bench, before the water began to cut itself off. She sighed and opened her eyes, taking the hint. Her fingers and toes were pruney. Kate propelled herself up and moved toward the glass door, shivering at the first breath of colder air. Immediately, the tiles on the floor and walls began heating around her, and a deep drawer filled with fluffy white towels popped open to her right. She snagged one, absently toweling off as she padded back to her locker. The powersuit was gone (as was her underarmor), but when she opened her locker, another was in its place. Next to it hung her more comfortable purple gear, looking small and vulnerable compared to the impressive mech.

“You think so?”

Jarvis couldn’t answer, of course, but she still enjoyed talking to him. She found herself doing it in battle, too; the soft clicks of his nonresponse were infinitely soothing. “All right, comfort it is,” she added, snagging the purple. She tugged it on with quick, efficient movements born of long experience. Even off the clock, she had to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, so sleeping without a uniform wasn’t an option. But this, she had to admit as she reached over her head, stretching languidly, was definitely much more comfortable than the powersuit. “Good call,” Kate said, padding into the kitchen. The oven door was opening, steam rising over slices of turkey. She hummed in approval, slipping on a mitt and reaching in to grab her dinner when the private line began to buzz.

Kate straightened, frowning.

The panel next to her gave another soft, low buzz, purple light flashing. Back in the locker room, she could hear her powersuit giving the same gentle drone. “Call accepted,” Kate said, slowly tugging off the mitt. “Cap, is that you?”

There was a moment’s hesitation before Karo’s voice came over the line. “No. No, it’s me. Karolina, I mean.”

Kate smiled. “Hey, Karo. I just started down time. We have a lull in action; tell Teddy I’ll have the full report to him after I’ve had some food and a few hours of sleep under my belt. Things have been _crazy_ here, but—”

“Kate.”

Karo’s voice sounded so small, so _lost_ that Kate immediately froze. Gooseflesh pricked its way down her arms and her stomach slowly began to drop. “What happened?” Kate asked, quieter. The little, hitching sob had her heart pounding in double time. “Karo,” she said, using her Hawkeye voice. “ _What happened_?”

“We were attacked. It was a small— A small group. Skrulls. There was a…” Karo dragged in a breath. “Scythe was being reckless. The Captain moved in to help him, and the rest of us were pinned down. Scythe won’t say exactly what happened, but the Captain was hit with a disruptor and he— We were too far away and there was nothing—” Her voice cracked.

Kate slowly lifted a hand to cover her mouth, staring blankly at the far wall. No. Oh, God, no. It wasn’t possible. “Teddy?” she said.

Karo choked out a harsh sob, voice going muffled as if she’d buried her face in her hands. Kate’s heart sank. “Oh,” she said, so quietly she wasn’t sure Karo could even hear. “ _Oh_.”

She and Teddy had drawn lots before she left on this mission to see who’d lead the vanguard and who’d stay behind to watch the mansion. It had been _blind stupid luck_ that had brought her here and left him at home. She couldn’t help but wonder what could have been different if she’d stayed behind instead. She couldn’t help but wonder if—

There was no way he could be _dead_. Not Teddy.

“Are you sure?”

A chair moved across the (magnetized) floor and Kate sank into it gratefully. Water was already beginning to boil in the tea kettle; trust Jarvis to go straight for the Earl Grey when there was bad news.

“We’re sure,” Karo said. There was still a sob fighting to get free, making her voice quaver, but at least she was intelligible. “Brandon wanted us to get Josh and maybe—maybe bring him back, but no one knows where Josh is and Teddy had signed…” She trailed off.

“He signed the DNR,” Kate finished for her, dully. She should know—she’d been right there next to him, signing her own, when he’d done it. _Fuck_. “Okay. Okay.” She drew in a long, steadying breath. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart. There was a battle still raging, and a funeral would have to be planned—a monument, because the Captain had done more for the Avengers than most over the years—and a vote to elect her new co-leader and—

She closed her eyes and tipped her head back. “Billy,” Kate said quietly. “Someone needs to… _I_ need to find a way to tell Billy.”

Karo was silent for a long minute. “We’d thought about that too, but… Are you sure that’s wise?” she asked quietly.

“Of course it is,” Kate said in her Hawkeye voice, meaning _no_. “Have Jeanne send the full report—I want every detail before I make a decision. I assume the body is…” The body; not Teddy. It would be so much easier if she could distance herself from this.

“We brought him in and managed to— He looks okay. He looks like himself. He’s in, in stasis, and—”

“Good.” Kate made herself stand; she swayed a little on her feet, reaching out to steady herself. The walls and floor hummed in worry. “We’ll need to see if there’s a way to open a temporary window for Billy, for the funeral. He’ll want to see Teddy.” And Billy, of course, couldn’t leave his prison. Not even for this. “Call Strange to arrange it. How’s Brandon holding up?”

Karo gave soft sigh.

“He has to know he can’t do that. Not right now.” Kate understood the urge—the _need_ —to fall apart. She could feel the terrible pall of loss just waiting to settle over her. But she couldn’t afford it, _they_ couldn’t afford it. Not in the field, not when the mansion was vulnerable, and _not_ in the face of something this delicate.

When Billy Kaplan-Altman’s daughter had been murdered, he’d decimated the Skrull Empire in his grief; she didn’t want to imagine what could happen now that Teddy had been taken, too.

“Kate?”

Kate wiped a hand over her face, forcing herself to focus. “I’m still here, sorry. Just. Thinking. Can you handle things at the mansion for now?”

“It’ll be okay,” Karo promised quietly. “You do what you need to over there and I’ll make sure everything’s still standing when you get back.”

“Thanks, Karo. Please tell Jeanne I’ll be waiting for that report. I’m going to be getting things ready on my end.”

Big words. In the end, once the line disconnected, all Kate did was stand there and stare blankly at the wall. Her mind was spinning in a thousand different directions, horror and grief and practicality warring for dominance. She wished… It would have been easier if it had been anyone else. She _wished_ it had been someone else, and God, that made her feel like shit on top of everything. Who would she have wished death on instead? Brandon? Jeanne? _Karo_?

Kate closed her eyes and dropped her head forward, feeling suddenly ancient. They were starting to creep up on forty now; she’d been doing this superhero thing since she was a teenager. Losing people never got any easier.

Losing _family_.

The floor softly hummed beneath her feet, radiating warmth. Kate sighed and looked up. Her heart ached in her chest, but her eyes were dry. There had been too much death for her to cry over it now, even for Teddy. Later, maybe, when she didn’t need to keep a clear head. “I’m okay,” she promised, absently reaching out to run her hand over the counter in a warm caress. “I’ll _be_ okay, at least. Could you tell Tommy I want to see him?”

If anyone would know how to reach Billy now, it would be his brother. 

**

**Tommy**

**

“Are you sure this is safe?”

Tommy looked up, startled, at Kate’s low voice. It was the first either of them had spoken since the door to Limbo had been opened back in California. There had been a part of him that had been grateful for the silence, despite the heavy press of _blame_ he could never seem to stop from reading into it. It was an old, familiar ache, more imagined than real:

_He’s your mystical twin brother. Why couldn’t you stop him?_

He shrugged a shoulder uncomfortably, pushing that whisper of doubt away. Now wasn’t the time for his minor psychoses. “No,” Tommy said, climbing one of the jagged rocks that ringed Billy’s home. “I definitely wouldn’t call this safe.”

“Then why are we here?” Kate gracefully leapt from jagged rock to jagged rock, dark brows knit together into a ( _shit, here we go_ ) worried frown. She looked unaccountably delicate in the threatening gloom, but then, that could have been the grief talking. She was beautiful, Tommy thought, and fierce, and very alive. She’d shaved her head after the ends had been burned in a fight with… Jesus, was he getting so old that he couldn’t even keep their major villains straight anymore? Anyway, after a major fight with who-the-fuck-ever. It had been intended as a field measure, a brief stop-gap before she could grow it all out again, but somewhere along the way practicality won out over vanity and the GI Jane look had stayed, complete with a delicate, branching tattoo following the length of her spine from the curve of her ass to the base of her skull. It nearly hid the scars he could never help but see.

Tommy sighed and stopped, shaking his head at her arched brow. He was spacing again; he needed to get a better handle on that. “I’m sorry?”

Kate deftly leapt to the rock he’d been woolgathering on, one strong hand gripping his bicep in a comforting squeeze. “I said,” she repeated, not unkindly, “if you weren’t sure how we’d be received, maybe we should have tried to contact Billy another way.”

“How? How would we contact him? He doesn’t exactly get cell phone service in his _magical prison_ , and I don’t know about you, but I’m all tapped out of ways to force the Sorcerer Supreme to answer his mail.”

“Tommy.”

“Or maybe you think we still have some sort of woo-woo twin telepathy or something? Maybe you think that I kept that,” _that they let me keep that_ , “after Billy _lost his mind_ and started slaughtering hundreds of millions of Skrull? Maybe you think I should just be able to mentally reach out and _voila_ , Maximoff powers unite?”

“ _Tommy_ ,” Kate said, voice sharpening. He looked up, meeting her eyes. Over their heads, the violet-black sky—full dark, no stars, never any stars here—twisted and clouded over like a pot left to boil. “No one is blaming you. No one is suggesting anything of the sort. Stop blaming yourself and focus before I have to knock you upside your thick skull.” She twined their fingers together with impossible tenderness and squeezed.

He barked a laugh. “Wow, Kate,” he said, squeezing back. “You should talk to my shrink. The two of you would have a—”

“Tommy.”

“Right,” he said, “focusing.” He glanced over the miles of razor-sharp volcanic rock toward the huge moat surrounding the impenetrable castle that was his brother’s prison-slash-home in this distant pocket of Limbo. _Subtle, Billy_. “He hasn’t been willing to talk since Teddy sent the divorce papers. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out—forcing ourselves into his space is the only way we’ll be able to reach him, safe or not.”

Kate made a series of worried faces (she had an arsenal as big as her…actual arsenal) and let go of his hand. He immediately missed the warmth. “That long? Teddy sent those… What, a year ago?”

He snorted and began to climb again. “It may have escaped your notice, Kate,” Tommy said dryly, “but Billy? Is kind of a drama queen.”

“I think the castle gave it away.”

“Just cross your fingers that he didn’t dream up a dragon to guard it.”

She hummed low in her throat in agreement. The crazy thing was, there really could be a dragon here in this strange place his brother controlled with his thoughts. They could be attacked by anything, by the sky itself, at any moment if Billy chose. They just had to hope Billy was in the mood to receive visitors. Tommy wasn’t convinced that Billy had gone _that_ far around the bend…but then, he hadn’t spoken to him in a year. A lot could change in that time. A shitton had changed for _him_ , hadn’t it? For him, for Kate, for Noh-Varr, for David… Sometimes it seemed like Teddy was the only constant in their lives, the one person who remained unchanged, unwavering against the steady crush of time.

Except that wasn’t true anymore, was it?

 _I hope you never felt taken for granted, T_ , Tommy thought bitterly, climbing down the last slippery range onto the black sand beach. _Because there isn’t an Avenger alive, past or present, who isn’t reeling from your loss now._

“Obstacle two, defeated,” Tommy said as Kate dropped down lightly beside him. “Three, if you count actually forcing our way into this dimension in the first place. You ready to brave the moat?”

“After fighting our way through all that,” Kate said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder; in the distance, lighting forked towards the stormy black-waved sea they’d had to _row across_ , like, thanks Billy, “I think I can handle a little moat.”

Last words. Wasn’t that what people said, Tommy thought, when they’d crossed the dark beach only to stop and stare in horror at the lip of the moat. _No, wait. Famous last words_.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Tommy said, staring at the frothing water. It was wide—there was no way they could vault across—and it almost…glowed with some sort of inner light. Opalescent and viscous instead of anything like real water. And, oh yeah, let’s not forget the twisted, tortured _faces_ pressing up against each swell of the rippling waves. It was like looking at the souls of the damned trapped within a thin film of glistening skin. It was, bar none, the most disturbing thing he had ever seen.

And _Billy_ had dreamed it into being.

Tommy turned in a slow circle, taking in the boiling black sea, the grey-violet clouds hanging low and threatening, the shining razor-sharp ring of volcanic rock, the black sand beach with its twisting nests of bone-white driftwood, the _moat of the damned_ and the mirror-bright black castle tower riding high above it all. It was a hell dimension. It was a gothic nightmare.

Lightning forked directly over their heads, striking the beach not six feet away.

“YOU ARE FUCKING _SHITTING_ ME!” Tommy howled up at the apex of the castle tower. “Billy, you goddamned motherfucking cuntswabbing jackhole, you cut this shit out right the fuck NOW or I swear to motherfucking Christ I will kick you in the balls so hard you’ll have to buy some Air Jordans to pump your nutsack back up to size. Mother _fucker_.”

Kate stared. Tommy pointed at her. “Don’t you start,” he said. “My shrink says yelling is a perfectly natural outlet for stress.”

“I’m just wondering where you’d get Air Jordans _this_ day and age,” she said, deadpan.

“EBay.”

They both turned at the voice—at Billy’s voice—tension zinging between them like a pinball. Billy was standing on the other side of the moat, dressed in jeans and a dark blue long-sleeved shirt. His hair was longer than Tommy remembered, falling into his eyes, and his beard wasn’t as neatly trimmed, but it was still _Billy_.

“Hey,” Billy said, quieter. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Looking for you, asswipe.” Tommy took a step closer, then stopped, eyeing the moat. “Uh.”

Billy made a discreet gesture and the water went still—became _water_ again, no faces, no weird glow—before folding back to form a dry path. And it _was_ just like the water had been folded, Tommy thought as he crossed over. As if it had been nothing more than blue cloth. “Wow, way to go, Moses,” he said as he came up on the other bank, Kate at his side. “Thanks for leading us out of Egypt or whatever.”

“Just don’t get any ideas from Charlton Heston,” Kate added, pressing close to pull Billy into an impulsive hug. “You’re already looking a little wild and wooly. Hey, B.”

“Hey, Kate.” Billy’s voice was low, a little husky. He wrapped his arms around her middle, closing his eyes as he rested a cheek against her temple. He suddenly pulled back with a surprised laugh. “Sorry,” Billy said; he reached up to rub his palm across her shaved skull. “You’re just bristly. Tommy,” he added, reaching out to clasp Tommy’s hand. No hugs there—thank the flying fuck—but still. It was nice. Good. Better than he’d expected from all the crazy darkness of this place. Tommy squeezed Billy’s fingers in a manly sort of way and Billy smiled wryly at him out of one corner of his mouth. “Yeah,” he said, as if replying to everything Tommy hadn’t voiced. “Yeah, me too. Come on in. If you went through all this effort of breaking into my home, you may as well sit for a while.”

Billy gestured toward the dark tower before leading the way inside. Tommy wasn’t sure what he expected to find in there. Drafty old rooms and circular staircases and cobwebs everywhere, he supposed. He definitely wasn’t prepared for cheerful yellow walls, a roaring fire, and a comfortable couch that sagged in the middle.

“Holy crap,” Tommy said, freezing in the doorway. They both turned to look at him. “Outside it’s all Tower of Isengard, but inside it’s a fucking hobbit hole.”

Billy arched a brow.

“Oh shut up,” Tommy muttered, stepping inside and closing the door. Once the magical wasteland was gone, it was _gone_. Glancing out the window, all Tommy could see was a serene blue sky and the basketweave crossing of a garden trellis. “I’ve hung out with you dorks for so long that I picked up some of it out of self-preservation.”

Kate moved around the room, seemingly idly looking at knickknacks, though they all knew she was really checking her exits. Once a co-leader of the Avengers, always a co-leader of the Avengers, Tommy supposed.

“How are the other dorks?” Billy asked, moving to the little grouping of seats. He settled on one end of the couch. “Please, sit. _Sit_ ,” he said again, offering Kate a crooked smile when she hesitated. He reached out to nudge one of the chairs invitingly toward her, sleeve briefly falling back from his hand. The brilliant silver of his magical handcuff glinted in the firelight.

Tommy tensed at the sight. Billy didn’t look at him, but Tommy could tell he had noticed. He leaned back against the comfortable couchback, casually pulling his sleeve back into place.

Kate sat in the chair; Tommy took the couch next to Billy. Seeing those chains was a hard reminder of why Billy was here, why _they_ were here now.

And of course, of _course_ , Billy took that moment to say, “So, ah. How _is_ everyone? Eli? America? David? …Teddy?”

The way he said his estranged husband’s name, so quiet, so _lost_ , made everything inside Tommy twist in pain. Fuck. _Fuck_. He couldn’t— How could they expect him to be able to do this? Him, Tommy Shepherd, who’d been running so long and so hard that his own body seemed set to leave the rest of him behind. He rubbed at the hot ache where neck met shoulder, the one that never seemed to go away no matter what he did. He dug his fingers in, hoping Kate would take pity, take charge. He could count the seconds between each heartbeat as he waited. Milliseconds.

Kate clasped her hands and didn’t say a word.

“Tommy?” Billy’s voice tightened. He could _feel_ him tensing up next to him. “Kate? Guys, what… Is something wrong?” The pause between sentences was probably only long enough for a breath, but it felt _endless_ to Tommy, like he was twisting on a rack waiting for the screws to turn. “Is something wrong with _Teddy_?”

Silence.

“Oh my God. What happened? Is he sick? Is he hurt? What— _Fuck you_ , tell me.”

Tommy looked up helplessly, meeting Kate’s eyes. She subtly shook her head. He may not have had the words, but clearly she didn’t think she had the _right_. 

“Tommy—”

“All _right_ ,” he said, scrubbing his palms across his face. “All right, I just. Fuck. Billy.” Tommy looked up, meeting his brother’s eyes. There was real fear there, and dread, and growing fury. _Shit_. “I’m sorry, Billy, but he’s, he died. Teddy died.”

**

**Billy**

**

Time didn’t mean anything where he was. _Reality_ didn’t mean anything. There wasn’t a sun or stars or even something as basic as _the ground_ in this place unless he dreamed it into being. For the first stretch of time (only God knew how long; there wasn’t a patient boyfriend counting out the days of his depression this time) Billy didn’t bother to bring life to his new prison. It was huge and echoing and dark and he was floating weightless in it, eyes closed, body curled tight as if Limbo had become a womb. A tomb?

Funny-not-funny how close the two were.

He didn’t need to eat. He didn’t get thirsty. He didn’t get _tired_ unless he wanted to sleep. Which meant for the first…sometime…he just curled up in the black void and remembered. The images came to him like an endless patter of rain.

\+ Looking up to meet blue eyes for the first time, feeling awkward and dorky and trying desperately not to let it show.

\+ _That smile_ , breaking across that _face_ that could have been harsh, the way beautiful people sometimes were but he never, _never_ was.

\+ The first touch.

\+ The first kiss.

\+ Their wedding. Tommy had been his best man, pretending he wasn’t nervous, that he was above all ‘ _this sappy emotional shit_ ’, but every time Billy glanced at him, Tommy had his hand in his pocket as if checking to make sure the ring hadn’t somehow gone missing. His nervous energy was almost enough to make Billy nervous, too, which was ridiculous—he’d been in love with Teddy Kaplan-Altman for as long as he could remember. Why would he be nervous about marrying the only man he’d ever loved?

They’d spent their first anniversary fighting Doom _again_. The old guy just didn’t know when to quit. They’d made it up to each other the next year, though, and the year after that. So many years in easy succession, holding hands as they walked along a beach somewhere, or picked through a jungle on one of Teddy’s exhausting eco-holidays, or lay on the unfamiliar surface of an unfamiliar world as they stared up at the stars. It could have stretched on like that forever.

But then, Sophia.

She was a magical accident, a fluke splicing of genes and talent, but God, the moment that porcelain-fine shell had cracked ( _an egg_ , an actual egg; “Please don’t tell me you hatched, too.” A shrug. “I guess I must have. Why?” “Oh God, Teddy, we had omelets for breakfast! I feel like a murderer!” And laughter. Always laughter.) and _she was there_ , it didn’t matter how it had happened. Nothing _mattered_ except that tiny face scrunched up into the beginnings of a scream, skin flushing tomato-red, wild mass of dark hair sticky with amniotic fluid. Billy stared down at her in wordless shock, feeling the whole universe stagger around him.

He was a father.

He was a _father_.

Oh. _God_. What if he screwed this up?

“Teddy,” Billy said, reaching back blindly, and Teddy was there the way he always was, threading their fingers together, squeezing back as Doctor Strange carefully lifted _their baby_ from the fractured shell. “Oh my _God_ , Teddy.”

Teddy pressed his lips just below Billy’s ear. “Yeah,” he said. Then, “Tell me she got that _hair_ from you.”

\+ The first night with Sophia at home, bawling and sleeping between meals.

\+ The first night one of them had to stay behind with her while the other left to fight some galactic threat. (Billy; almost always Billy. Teddy had long since been _The Captain_ , and the Avengers needed him the way they didn’t always need Billy. Besides, there was something…peaceful about holding his daughter as he kissed his husband goodbye, like they were re-enacting some sort of 50s pseudo-paradise—except instead of going to the ad firm, Teddy was flying off into _space_ to fight a giant robot.) 

\+ Sophia’s first word. (Not Dada. Not Papa. But _Tommy_ , with Uncle Tommy grinning like a loon behind her, the little shit.)

\+ Sophia’s first step.

\+ The way she clung to his fingers with her tiny little hands and smiled up at him, black curls wild around her chubby face, green cape fluttering behind her as her toys lifted themselves into the air and began to _dance_.

\+ The way she’d curled between their bodies as they slept, a unit, a family.

\+ The way she’d made a single, startled noise when the Skrull assassin grabbed her by her little throat and _squeezed_.

It had been an extremist group furious at the dilution of Teddy’s line, but that wasn’t what Billy saw. Frozen there, for the worst moment of his life, too far away to do more than give a shuddery cry as Sophia, as _his daughter_ , jerked and went still, it didn’t _matter_ who was innocent and who was guilty. Even laying in the echoing emptiness of his cell, even knowing he had committed the greatest crime the universe had seen since the Dark Phoenix, he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t bring himself to care.

A Skrull had reached into his life and had taken the thing most precious to him; not even Teddy could stop him from _reaching back_.

 _Iwantthemalltodie_.

It had been…so easy. It had been easy up to the end, with the Skrull empire crumbled into dust, and the Avengers coming at him in full strength, and the darkness just opening up to swallow him whole. The Captain was the one who took him down in the end, but by then, he was ready to let his once-friends have him. He was ready to let _Teddy_ have him. The council had gathered to discuss his crime and pass judgment, as they had on his mother before him. Strange had slipped the silver shackles onto his wrists and the door had opened, and Eli had his hand on Teddy’s shoulder to keep him from following Billy into the void.

 _Good_ , Billy had thought, eyes on his husband, feeling the thread of grief and loss thrumming between them like a living thing. _It’s good. It’s better this way._

Someone like Teddy didn’t belong in the dark places of the world. Someone like Teddy _was_ light and life.

And now…

He closed his eyes and saw the darkness again, his little house falling away into nothingness. He saw Teddy’s face the way he’d been at sixteen, twenty-three, thirty-five. He drew in a shuddery breath and remembered _everything_.

“Billy,” Kate murmured, and he’d forgotten they were here with him, but he couldn’t forget everything else. Time didn’t mean anything in Limbo, but he was sure it had passed and the wounds shouldn’t have been as fresh, but Sophia was dead and Teddy was dead and the walls were literally falling away from the foundation, crumbling into dust. The black sand beach stretched open and surreal before them, the cozy furniture bizarrely out of place amongst the dunes. “Billy, what are you— Billy, you need to stay in control, okay? Tommy and I won’t be safe here if you don’t keep control.”

“How did it happen?”

He didn’t recognize his voice. It was low and guttural, too rough to be his own. Both Kate and Tommy were watching him with wary expressions. He’d clenched his fists tight and was glowing with faint blue energy. Lightning cracked over his skin.

Tommy cleared his throat. “Um, Billy, I think—”

“ _How did it happen_?” Billy jerked to his feet, feeling the now-familiar wild surge of grief and rage. It washed over him, howling up inside his gut as the dark sky began to fill with heavy black clouds. They shifted and roiled overhead, bolts of lightning crashing down to the black beach. One struck the grandfather clock, standing just a few yards away. It shattered, showering them with shards of wood and loose cogs. Kate hissed in a breath, and a thin red line opened across her cheek, dangerously close to her eye. Billy desperately tried to wrest back control. “How?”

“Are you seriously out of your shitting mind?” Tommy demanded.

“Tommy,” Kate said, reaching for him, but his twin was already on his feet, pushing close. 

Billy held up a warning hand—he could feel his insides cracking open, knew he was barely hanging on—but Tommy had never been very good at taking orders. “No, fuck that,” Tommy said, knocking Billy’s hand aside. “Do you really think we’re going to tell you how Teddy died so you can just go on _another_ killing spree? Maybe wipe out another entire race and leave the rest of us crawling on our hands and knees with the guilt of it for another decade?”

“ _Tommy_.” Kate’s hands were on Tommy’s shoulders, trying to pull him back; Billy reached out to grab the front of his shirt, _keeping_ him there. No one ever talked to him like this. When someone reached out to him, it was always tentative, delicate, as if he were still seesawing on the brink of some dangerous madness. Maybe he was—he didn’t regret a single Skrull death, even now, and if he knew who had taken… Who had taken Teddy from him, he thought maybe he could do it again.

But he didn’t feel dangerous most days, and it felt _good_ to have Tommy there _pushing_ again, even if his insides were slowly collapsing on themselves in his rising grief.

“You didn’t do anything,” Billy murmured, fist tightening. The collar of Tommy’s shirt dug into the exposed flesh of his neck. “There was no reason for you to feel guilt.”

Tommy scoffed. “Yeah, right. You’ve never been the brother of a supervillain, you asshole. People _look_ at you differently. They don’t trust you the same way. And refusing to help track you down, after you snapped?” He knocked Billy’s hand aside, bristling. “My ex won’t admit it, but that’s why I’m not with… With anyone anymore. Because the time came to choose a side and I fucking didn’t, wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ , and that makes me just as culpable.”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “She’s been watching me like a hawk— _ha_ , a hawk—this whole time, just in case. She thinks I haven’t noticed, but I’m not stupid and I’m not crazy. My shrink makes sure of that.”

Kate was slowly moving around them—no doubt looking for the best tactical position in case things went even more pear-shaped. Billy _knew_ her despite the passage of time. He knew the way a career Avenger thought. “I trust you, Tommy,” she said, voice even. “Just like I trust Billy not to let things get out of hand again.”

“Out of hand; Jesus, listen to her,” Tommy spat. “She’s calling genocide getting out of hand.”

“I just want to know what happened to Teddy,” Billy tried again. The lightning had stopped, but the stormclouds still hung dangerously low overhead. A strong wind whipped across the beach, blowing up sheets of black sand and driving the dark waves into a frenzy. Sand had begun to coat the strange, lonely pieces of furniture dotting the beach, dunes forming against his old couch and chairs as if the earth had opened its mouth to swallow them whole. “He’s my husband.”

Tommy reached out—Billy almost jerked away, but at the last minute, didn’t—and cupped the back of his skull. He dragged them together, pressing his forehead to Billy’s so tight it almost hurt, but… _Fuck_ , but it felt good, too. It felt _grounding_ , the way he hadn’t felt tied to the world in years. Billy dragged in an uneven breath, breaking on a sob he hadn’t realized was pushing up out of him. His eyes were hot, tears on his lashes, and Teddy was dead. Teddy, who had been so much to him for so long, who had stood by his side for decades, who had _loved him_ , who had fathered a child with him and lost her with him and watched with a breaking heart as Billy let himself become the very person they fought hardest to destroy.

Teddy. Was. Dead.

And there was nothing left inside him to keep fighting for.

“Tommy,” Billy choked, knees buckling. Tommy caught him, grip tight. His face was screwed up as if he were crying too, but his eyes were dry. There was so much pain on his face, so many years of suffering, but his eyes were bone dry and he was holding up Billy as if he had been born to do nothing else. “Oh God, he’s, oh _God_.”

“Yeah,” Tommy whispered, not trying to lie and make it easier. That was always the best and worst thing about him, the reason Billy had come to trust him so much. He didn’t sugarcoat, and he always told the truth. At least about the things that mattered. “Yeah, Billy. He’s dead.”

“We were going to—” Billy cut himself off, eyes squeezing shut. He wished, with sudden, vicious fury that the link between them hadn’t been severed. It would be so much easier if he didn’t have to form the words. If he could just release the howl of grief into his twin, the way he was bleeding it into the responsive sky.

Waves crashed in the distance. The wind began to howl again. Across the black sea, lightning struck.

Tommy dug his fingers tight into Billy’s hair and held on. “I know,” he said, and of course, _of course_ he did. Teddy wouldn’t have sent those papers without talking it over with Tommy and Kate first. It wasn’t his way. “But he didn’t want to. He never wanted to, Billy; he _loved_ you.”

“Loved.” Past tense. It wasn’t… It wasn’t _right_. None of this was _right_.

Billy pulled back, scrubbing tears from his eyes. “I have to see him,” he said. “Is he at the mansion? No,” he interrupted before either could answer. “No, of course he is. We should go now.” He closed his eyes and focused on the empathic environment. Gradually, the wind died. The storm subsided. The waves went still. When he opened his eyes again, they were standing in familiar _black_ , the void endless and echoing around them. “We should go before…”

He trailed off, rubbing at his face. God, he felt ancient. “Before we’re missed,” Billy finished quietly. Teddy was the one who always missed him when he was gone. There had been so many friends won and lost in his life—so very much lost—but Teddy had been the one fixed point in time, his constant. A world without Teddy Kaplan-Altman was terrible to consider.

“Billy,” Kate said quietly, not moving closer. Her voice was kind but firm. “You’re not coming with us.”

“ _What_?” Tommy whirled to face her, hands fisting at his sides, suddenly flaring bright with fury. The darkness of the void trembled in response, though neither of them seemed to notice. “What the hell are you talking about? Of course Billy’s coming with us; we came to bring him to Teddy.”

Kate, Billy noted detachedly, had moved into a defensive position. It was subtle but, again, as clear as if she were telegraphing every move. Her eyes ticked between them and her lithe body had tensed as if waiting for an attack she hoped didn’t come. “No,” she said evenly, clearly. “We came to tell him about Teddy. He can’t come back with us.”

“Why the fuck _not_?”

“Because I’m a threat to the Avengers.” Both Kate and Tommy turned to look at him, Tommy’s expression torn between disbelief and disgust, Kate’s impossible to read. So it was true. “How far down am I, Kate? On the Avenger’s list of enemies?”

Tommy hissed out a breath. “Don’t be a fucking idiot, Billy, you’re not—”

“Kate?”

Her eyes were locked squarely on him now. “Number four.”

That…he wasn’t expecting. “So high?” Billy said.

“We recently had to re-evaluate thanks to a change in circumstances,” she admitted, and he had to close his eyes against a fresh wave of grief because of course— _of course_ —she meant Teddy’s loss. The Captain had been the one who’d finally brought him down. Without his stabilizing presence, who knew what lengths the mad Sorcerer Supreme would go to?

Billy let out a small breath that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Sometimes he wondered, if he found a way to reach out to sixteen-year-old him, would he believe he’d eventually come to this?

“That’s bullshit, Kate,” Tommy was arguing. “Yeah, okay, he went a little crazy for a while, and things got bad—” It was funny, Billy mused, how it was Tommy’s turn to downplay what he’d done, now that someone else was at his throat, “—but he’s been here for, fuck, how long? And just look at him. He’s not going to lose his shit again. He’s not going to hurt anyone. He just wants to see his husband. We _owe_ that to him.”

But Kate was already shaking her head. “We can’t do that, Tommy. It’s not our call. We can arrange for a window to be opened for the funeral, but that’s it. That’s all we can promise.” Her eyes cut to Billy. “I’m sorry, Billy,” she said, and he could tell she meant it. Her beautiful face was lined with exhaustion and grief.

No. No, of course—Kate had lost Teddy too, as a friend but also as a partner. They’d led the Avengers together for so long that it must have been like losing a limb for her.

“I’m so, so sorry, but we can’t bring you back with us. I just wanted someone to tell you. I wanted to _see_ you.”

Billy jerked his head in acknowledgement, feeling his heart sink as that darkness cracked open inside of him again. He felt like a black hole, as if the place where Teddy and Sophia had always been was crumbling in on itself, inverting until it took all of him with it. Why not? What was he without them?

A murderer.

A prisoner.

A villain.

The Avenger’s fourth greatest threat. How was that even possible?

Tommy was still talking. “…okay, Billy. I’ll argue them down. I’ll find some people who’ll side with us, too. Eli. Eli’s sure to agree that you should be released. I mean, fuck, it’s inhumane to keep you from him after everything that has happ…”

Billy looked up slowly, blocking out Tommy’s endless rant, and met Kate’s eyes. There were lines around her eyes and scars he didn’t remember. There were years of care and pain on her face. He remembered her as a girl, dark hair whipping in the wind, pulling back the string of her bow in the face of impossible odds. He remembered her leaning her hip against the counter at HQ and chatting with Teddy—the way sunlight streamed through the high window to catch on her purple glasses and the curve of Teddy’s earrings.

The way it caught in golden hair. The way Teddy lifted his head as if sensing Billy’s eyes on him and grinned, blushing at the same time because they were both _so young_ and endlessly earnest and brand new to love.

 _Teddy_ , Billy thought, body gone heavy with all he had lost. _Teddy_.

He tilted his head toward Kate, as if to say _I’m sorry_ , and saw the moment she realized what was happening.

“Billy, _no_!” she shouted, launching herself at him. Tommy moved forward immediately, awkwardly stumbling as if torn between twin impulses to help Kate and to keep her from Billy. It was only a brief distraction, but it was all Billy needed. He stepped back, feeling the sudden fierce _burn_ of his shackles as they fought to hold him—but he was stronger than Doctor Strange, had been from the very beginning. The only reason he’d never left his prison was because he’d had nothing else to go to.

Now, he had Teddy.

And he’d be damned if he was going to let anyone keep him from his husband.

**

**Brandon**

**

“Well you fucking _find him_ ,” Brandon snarled before cutting the feed. Santo’s face faded into a wide, blank screen. It was almost enough to make him long for the days of rotary phones—he could use the discordant jangle of a receiver slamming into the cradle right about now.

Brandon leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. He drew in a deep breath, but it went rough, serrated, and he grabbed for the first thing that came to hand—a datapad, yes, fine, whatever—and flung it with all his strength at the far wall. It tumbled end over end, screen winking as it caught the light, and smashed against painted brick.

Then clattered, whole and seemingly unharmed, to the ground.

 _Fucking_ Prodigy and his _fucking_ indestructible alloys.

Brandon jerked to his feet, kicking back his chair violently. “Jarvis,” he said, stalking away from the communications hub, then back again. Electricity cracked over his skin, dancing like a live wire over his knuckles.

“Yes, Brandon?” The smooth, clipped voice came from all around him. They’d booted him back up a little over an hour ago at partial power, and to hell with the drain on the system. The mansion up in Chicago could turn off its lights and kill the air for a few days while Hawkeye led the mobile unit out West and they…

They…

 _Fuck_.

He buried his face in his hands and scrubbed his palms roughly over his eyes. The confused ball of wild fury and even wilder grief kept tumbling around inside of him, fit to drive him around the bend. He was pretty sure he was a few steps away from snapping. Maybe less than that, hell.

“Was there something you needed, or were you merely taking attendance? If so, present.” Jarvis’s voice was faultlessly polite despite the barely hidden _edge_ of snark. It was always there when directly addressing Brandon, as if he didn’t quite approve of him even after all these years. Not for the first time, Brandon wondered where they’d gotten the personality, and whether the AI’s dislike of him came from some faux pas Brandon couldn’t be assed to remember or whether there was just some random algorithm misfiring amongst all those cables and connections.

He suspected the fact that he even considered the latter meant it was probably the former, but whatever, he was used to being everyone’s least favorite Avenger by now.

“Sure, yeah, just.” He gestured sharply, trying to fight past the haze that kept wanting to settle over him. _Think, Brandon. Think. Who else could know where Foley is_?

“Ford,” he suddenly said, head coming up sharply. “Jarvis, what’s the last known location of Ford?”

There was a terse silence. Funny how a machine could make a stankface when it didn’t even have a body. “Would you care to be more specific?”

“ _No_. Just answer the damn question, junkbucket.” He turned, kicking at the chair just to make it spin. It was either that or fry the whole hub, the whole _mansion_ ; usually this was Teddy’s cue to track him down and see if he wanted to go hang out on the roof (translated: _talk through your issues as if I were your shrink and not the man you most sincerely want to jump_ ), or Karo would make a face at him and make him go eat froyo with her, or Tommy would get all up in his face until they were taking out their aggression in (what Brandon was always eager to point out was) a _remarkably_ homoerotic way, or or or.

Point being, his team was always there, but there was no _team_ without Teddy. Not now, maybe not ever again. He was the heart.

No.

No, he was the _backbone_ that kept them up straight, and what the fuck was Jarvis going on about?

“…buried in Ford Cemetery located at 15801 Joy Rd. Detroit, MI, on the grounds of St. Martha's Episcopal Church…”

Brandon straightened like a shot. “What, wait, back up a minute—Ford is dead?”

“Indeed,” Jarvis said. “Henry Ford died in 1947 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 83 in—”

“You’re such a fucking _troll_ ,” he groaned, throwing himself back into the chair. He kicked off with his heel, letting it spin. “I meant _Kevin_. You know, Kevin Ford, the X-Man?”

The lights dimmed, almost imperceptivity. “I see. In that case, clearly it would have benefited you to be more specific.”

Robotic stankface at its finest.

Brandon rubbed at his eyes again. They were itchy and aching; he could feel the pulse of blood in his left eyeball. When he was a kid, he used to think that stress marker was actually an alien parasite getting ready to pop out of his brain. God, he was a fucked up kid. Then again, it was a pretty fucked up world. “Just,” he said, suddenly exhausted.

The walls hummed what could have been an electronic apology. “Kevin Ford’s last known location was in Bolivia with former teammate Noriko Ashida. There is no evidence that either he or Noriko has been in contact with Josh Foley at any point during the last year.”

“Damn,” Brandon murmured, not surprised but drained all the same. It hadn’t been a great lead—from what he vaguely remembered from Santo’s stories, the two hadn’t exactly gotten along—but he was grasping at straws. Short of tracking down a telepath powerful enough to do a planet-wide search (which he’d considered and set aside; telepaths were in short supply, and there hadn’t been one that powerful in a long, long time) he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage to find Foley.

Which meant he wasn’t sure how he was going to bring Teddy back to life.

Which was frankly unacceptable.

“Jarvis,” Brandon said, spinning slowly in the chair, staring up at the ceiling to keep his eyes from burning with fresh tears he refused to shed. Crying meant he had given in. Crying meant he believed he wasn’t going to succeed. “Is there anyone with the Captain now?”

Again, that too-gentle hum, as if Jarvis were being delicate with him. He _hated_ that. He hated the way his entire team—his family—was reacting to this momentary setback. Karo wouldn’t stop crying, and Laura was already out the door with Scythe and their little caravan of teenage Skrull, and Jeanne was reporting in to Kate all the details _while_ arranging for a funeral and pulling up seating charts and sending out notices and…

And it was so much bullshit. They were going to laugh about this, later, when they had Teddy back.

“He’s alone now, if you wanted to see him.” The door opened on its own, in obvious invitation. Brandon didn’t even pretend that it bothered him. He pushed himself to his feet and headed out of the communications hub, grateful to be moving.

The mansion was big and echoingly empty with so many of them out West. Automatic lights flickered on as Brandon padded past the huge wall of windows (paned with reinforced glass, because they weren’t idiots). In that moment before the flare of light, he could see out across the New York skyline, too-bright in the growing twilight. Once the lights kicked on, however, all he saw was himself—tired and worn; still handsome, but with even more silver spreading through his dark hair and fresh shadows beneath his eyes.

 _Heartbroken_. He looked heartbroken.

“Don’t bother with the lights,” Brandon mumbled, passing through the next door. He headed instinctively toward the morning room where Karo had insisted they leave the stasis pod ( _not coffin; God damn it, it wasn’t a coffin if they never needed to bury him in it_ ), silent as a ghost. Jarvis let him open the last door by himself—or maybe he had slipped away, turning a blind eye. Whatever it was, Brandon appreciated it. The solid _click_ of the door sliding shut behind him was oddly grounding.

He leaned back against it, palms pressed flat against cool wood, and studied the coffin-not-coffin. It was chrome and glass and beautiful in its own way. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d suddenly been dumped into a weird twist on _Snow White_ , though—seeing Teddy laying there, gorgeous as ever, eyes closed as if in sleep and enclosed by walls of glass…

“If I thought a kiss would wake you, I’d be ripping the top off of that thing in a second,” Brandon murmured. His voice was hoarse. “Even if all I got for my pains was you sitting up to tell me you just _really_ like me as a friend.”

He sighed and let his head fall back with a muffled _thud_. God, look what he had come to. He’d first come to the Avengers Academy thinking that with a little charisma, a little skill, and a little luck he could rule the world. He’d come thinking that he had everything it took to make the perfect life for himself.

But shit had started to happen from the word _Go_ , unraveling his chances, unraveling _him_. Twisting him up more and more inside until he’d felt like his gut was a series of knots and there was no way out but—but _out_. But blasting out, full-on villain, darkside to the core.

 _This is what you made of me, Osborn_ , he used to think, back in the bad days. _I’m going to make you proud._

And then, somehow, someway, it had all begun to turn around. He’d been coaxed back from the ledge. Not by Captain America, the old goat, or Iron Man (asshole) or even his old teachers. He’d been brought back from the brink by young idealists who were too stupid to listen when he told them they were just going to get their souls ripped out of the meaty cage of their bodies. That they were going to pay for their childish idealism with blood over and over and over.

Cap—Hulkling, then, still—had clasped him on the shoulder. He had the bluest eyes Brandon had ever seen and the kind of smile that made lightning shiver beneath his skin. “Hey,” he’d said, ducking his head so they were eye-to-eye. “Yeah, maybe it’ll suck sometimes, but that just means we’ll have to live life all the harder between catastrophes. Yeah? I’m Teddy.”

“Brandon.” Reluctantly, he’d reached out to shake hands. “I’m pretty sure I was going to kill your whole team when you breached the mansion walls.”

Sunlight glinted off pale hair and gold earrings. He had very dark eyelashes for a natural blond, long and thick. “Are you still planning on it?”

“…no,” he said, and the funny thing was, he meant it. The anger was draining away, a weary, exhausted peace flooding in its wake. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone through with it anyway; maybe despite his many and varied flaws (laid out for him in meticulous detail whenever anyone thought he had a moment to spare), he really didn’t have it in him to go darkside. Or maybe he really was so shallow that a pretty blond with gorgeous blue eyes and a tight ass was enough to send him off-course.

Whatever. Whatever it was, whatever it might have been, he’d looked up into Teddy’s growing grin with a wry twist of his mouth. “I guess I won’t go crazy and kill everyone after all.”

“Good. _Great_.” Teddy squeezed his shoulder again and stepped back, gesturing toward the rest of his team slowly making their way through the scorched mansion halls. “Come on. After we secure the place and make sure all the Ultron robots are dismantled, we’re going to order food. I’ll buy you a beer.”

“It had better not be a shitty beer,” Brandon warned, already feeling himself begin to relax. He wondered, briefly, whether it was some kind of power or mutation at work…and then mentally shrugged and decided that no, Teddy was just that _warm_. _Good people_ , Berto would have said. If he’d survived, they probably would have ended up liking each other. “I’ve had one hell of a day you wouldn’t believe.”

Teddy grinned, dimples flashing. “Oh, I’d believe it,” he said. He leaned in, voice lowering, as if he were sharing some great secret. “See, there was this crazy kid holed up in the Avenger’s mansion, threatening to fry us all alive if we tried to break in.”

“That asshole,” Brandon said with a surprised laugh. Teddy’s teammates were moving in closer; one of them (Billy, he’d find out later, the gorgeous blond’s _boyfriend_ ) had both brows arched in blatant surprise. “I hope you really showed him what was what.”

“I’m working on that,” he teased back, and it was… Well. It wasn’t love at first sight or anything ridiculous like that, but over time? Over battles fought and won (and lost), and teammates mourned, and the dark days when Sophia had been killed and Teddy’s husband lost his fucking _mind_ and showed Brandon what going darkside really looked like…

Then, yeah, it was love. It was love so fierce and so hot he thought he’d burn up from the inside out every time he looked up and saw the Captain flying overhead—golden and strong and impossibly _good_.

Brandon would defy anyone to see Teddy like that and not fall in love with him.

And now, years later, he _still_ loved Teddy; it was like a reflex he’d never been able to train himself out of, a habit he hadn’t had the strength of will to break. Teddy was the best of them, all warmth and inner strength and golden idealism. The rest of them could be corrupt little shits all they wanted—God knew Brandon fit that bill more often than not—but Teddy…

He _shone_. As corny as it sounded, as much as the cynical part of him hated the thought, Teddy was the warmth of the hearth and the voice of reason and the steadying hand reaching out every time the world seemed just a little too dark. Even after Sophia—even after that impossible hurt—Teddy was _good_.

There was no way the world could spin merrily on with that goodness _gone_.

“You’re a real asshole, Theodore Rufus Kaplan-Altman—did anyone ever tell you that?” Brandon pushed away from the door and took a few hesitant steps into the room. The shades had been drawn on the huge bay windows overlooking the park. The lights were dim. It could have been anytime, day or night, the thick walls of the mansion keeping out the sound of traffic inching its way down the avenue. He stopped in the middle of the Turkish rug and closed his eyes, dragging in a deep breath. Coming in here may have been a mistake. All the anger was draining away from him at the sight of Teddy’s calm, still face and the impossible weight of one hand folded over the other.

He could have been sleeping. Wasn’t that the old cliché?

“Fuck, Teddy,” Brandon murmured. He drew a shaking hand across his brow, feeling… God, so many things. The tears were there now, hot and pressing against his lids. He tried to blink them away, scrambling for the anger, the frenetic need to _do_ something. He felt so weak at the sight of the man he had loved and had never been allowed to have. He felt—

The proximity alarm brought his head up with a snap. A pulse of red light flashed, winking on the smooth glass of the stasis camber (coffin), painting Teddy’s skin in strips of scarlet. The alarm blared, impossibly loud; he had to fight the useless urge to clamp his hands over his ears.

“Jarvis!” Brandon called, turning toward the door. It swung wide after his first step, the AI alert as ever. “What the _fuck_ is going on?”

“I think that’s for me,” Billy Kaplan-Altman, the mad Sorcerer Supreme, said as he stepped through the open door. “Hello, Brandon.”

**

**Billy**

**

He hadn’t planned on causing a stir. To be honest, he hadn’t planned any of this particularly well. The hasty teleportation had brought him to the suite he’d shared with Teddy all those long years ago, with the tiny kitchenette and the second bedroom no doubt still painted a pale green, with murals of fantastical creatures spiraling up the walls toward a high ceiling.

He half expected to see Teddy sitting at one of the big windows, feet tucked up under him, head bent over a book. The memories were so strong here—so _good_ —that for a moment he _did_ see him there out of the corner of his eye. And then he turned his head to look and the sense-memories faded into shadows. Teddy’s favorite corner was empty. The entire suite was empty, far too quiet, far too still.

As silent as the grave.

There were signs of Teddy all around him, however, and that was its own sort of comfort. The bed was messy, covers shoved back into a tangled mass at the foot. There were clothes on the floor and the hamper Billy had bought them ages ago was overflowing. He’d moved the furniture around a little in the time Billy had been gone—a bookshelf once tucked into one corner was now in another—but so much was the _same_ that Billy half expected to open the closet door and see his own clothes hanging next to Teddy’s. Proof of their intertangled lives.

He actually took a step toward the closet, hand outstretched, before common sense kicked in. Jarvis would be detecting the extra life sign in the mansion at any moment—he couldn’t risk waiting around.

Billy spun on his heel and headed toward the door. Their suite was on the same level as many of the mansion’s rarely-used “living spaces”. Morning room, formal living room, extra den with the smaller television. There was a very good chance that they’d plan to have the viewing up here, which meant he only needed one lucky guess and he’d find his husband.

Billy only made it a quarter down the hall before the alarm sounded. Really, it was a wonder he had made it this far, he mused. They must be using Jarvis in the mobile unit as well as the four mansions—the AI had the largest core processor of any known terrestrial or extraterrestrial computing system, but the strain of running five massive programs was incredible. He couldn’t believe Kate would allow it.

Still, it had bought him time. Billy took a hard left, veering toward the morning room, red lights flashing in time with his brisk footsteps. It had been Teddy’s favorite room in the mansion thanks to its incredible view of the park and all that _sunlight_. Knowing his once-friends, they’d want to put him where he had been happiest.

Billy gestured sharply, blowing open the doors before they could be secured. He couldn’t fight the bizarre double feeling of all of this: the Tower had been his home for so many years, and yet here he was breaking into it as if he were a thief, a _villain_. He supposed in a literal sense of the term, he was.

Better not to think of that now.

The doors rebounded smartly off the far wall, crash lost under the drone of the alarm. “What the fuck is going on?” Brandon Sharpe snapped, stalking toward him. Of course—of _course_ —he’d run into his doppelganger here. Billy tightened his jaw, feeling everything inside him tense in visceral dislike. The words on the tip of his tongue tasted just as bitter as they sounded. “I think that’s for me,” he said, stepping inside the room. There, over Brandon’s shoulder, he could just make out a glass and chrome box.

 _Teddy_. Of course Brandon would be hanging around, perpetually unwanted, when he finally saw his husband again. “Hello, Brandon.”

“Fuck me,” Brandon breathed, eyes gone comically wide. Then all at once he _lashed_ out with his powers, streaks of lightning singeing the air. Billy threw up a hand and flung lightning back at Brandon with a furious noise. The voltage was incredible—he could feel the raw, guttural power of it lacing through him. If he had been anyone else, it might have succeeded in taking him out.

But Brandon had never been that lucky.

“I wanted to do this peacefully,” Billy snapped, throwing back a constant stream of cracking light. Sparks flew where the two bolts met, puffs of smoke rising from the rug. The ceiling was turning black, and flames were beginning to creep up the heavy drapes, barely controlled by the targeted sprinklers. “Step down and we can pretend you never attacked me.”

“Fuck off and we can pretend you were never here,” Brandon snarled. The scar bisecting his face—many decades old by now—glowed with inner light. He pushed with his powers, bolts snaking away from the main stream to strike the wall, the floor. The lights exploded above them in a shower of sparks, like an Independence Day parade. Behind Brandon, laying too still in that damn glass box, Teddy’s face was bathed in flickering light.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Billy said, a little desperately. He could hear footsteps tearing down the hall. Within minutes, the rest of the mansions’ inhabitants would be here. He gestured and the door slammed shut, locking itself. Another curt wave of his hand and the alarm cut, Jarvis locked from the room, the walls becoming impenetrable.

Brandon cursed. “You shouldn’t be back here,” he said. The strain was clear on his face, sweat streaming down his brow. Billy could have ended this quickly, but there was a part of him that almost wanted to give Brandon the chance to overpower him. To at least give him the opportunity, even if they both knew Billy couldn’t be beaten.

 _Or maybe_ , a quiet, dark part of Billy whispered, _you just wanted an opportunity to humble him_.

He flinched away from that thought—he didn’t want to be that kind of man—and grit his teeth. “I’m sorry,” Billy said, bearing into the wild arc of power. It pushed against Brandon slowly but inexorably. “I wouldn’t have come, but I had to see Teddy. I don’t want to fight—I just want to see my husband.”

“He isn’t _yours_ anymore,” Brandon snapped, feet slipping against the hardwood floor, sweat pouring down his brow. He looked like he was about to collapse at any moment, tapped out. Drained dry.

“I know,” Billy said quietly, bearing in on one last _push_. Blue light flashed as the stalemate broke, lightning crashing in a brilliant corona around the helpless arch of Brandon’s body. It branched out, flickering against the walls, the ceiling, the floor. _Like a scene from Highlander_ , Billy thought, and was immediately ashamed of himself. This wasn’t a joke, and he wasn’t…

No matter what his once-teammates thought, he wasn’t so hardened inside that seeing Brandon collapse in a boneless sprawl gave him any pleasure.

Billy looked down at him, pity and resignation heavy in his chest. They had never gotten along—the dark-haired boy with the movie star good looks had always coveted what was Billy’s, and that was the worst kind of foundation for friendship—but he’d respected him. He’d _cared_ about him, the way he cared about all of them. The way he’d probably never stop caring.

But that didn’t stop him from stepping over his inert body to ( _finally_ ) be at his husband’s side.

Billy drew in an unsteady breath, fingers curling into loose fists as he crossed the faded old rug. The morning room was long and narrow; now, eyes on that glass-and-chrome coffin, it felt distorted: a funhouse trick. The air was heavy and far too quiet.

 _You can still turn back_. The thought was as sudden as it was unexpected. The urge to turn on his heel and run was bubbling up and out of him in messy waves, making his pulse leap. He wanted to…fuck, he wanted to just _run_. If he ran back to the hollow dark of his prison, maybe he could pretend it all hadn’t come to this. Maybe he could wish for it hard enough that his powers would make it real.

Another step. Another. The glass coffin hid nothing from his sight. And then he was there, time distorted around him— _there_ , standing over his husband’s dead body, feeling the earth tremble beneath his feet.

And Teddy…Teddy didn’t look as if he were sleeping.

He lay perfectly still, hands folded over his broad chest, eyes closed. Someone had cleaned up his power suit and left his helmet at the crook of his arm, as if he were just taking a nap between missions, ready to roll to his feet and join the fray at a moment’s notice. Great pains had been taken to make him look as natural as possible, Billy noticed: his hair was brushed back and his lips were faintly parted as if on a breath. There was color in his cheeks thanks to the subtle lights set along the grooves of metal.

Someone else may have been fooled, may have thought he looked _peaceful_ , at rest. Billy knew better.

Billy _knew_ him, better than anyone could.

“Teddy,” he murmured, carefully resting a hand on the cold glass. “Oh _fuck_ , Teddy.” His fingers shook, jittering across the face of his own reflection as he stared down at the too-perfect, too-peaceful face. Teddy didn’t sleep like this. Teddy moved and burrowed and stole blankets and pressed cold feet against skinny calves. Teddy threw an arm over his waist and bit at the stretched neck of his t-shirt with a playful growl. Teddy hunched in on himself against nightmares or sprawled wide, starfishing across the bed when his dreams were sweet. He was constant movement, energy, _life_. 

This…

This was all _wrong_.

“ _Teddy_ ,” again, more a moan this time. Billy clapped a hand over his mouth, struggling to hold back the choking sob, but it wouldn’t— He couldn’t—

He jerked against the harsh cry that broke free and sagged against his husband’s coffin when his knees gave out. He would have fallen, but he caught himself against the polished glass, eyes on Teddy’s perfect, beautiful, beloved, _lifeless_ face. Billy tried to stagger up, but it was as if were underwater, the weight of his clothes dragging him down, and he couldn’t—

He couldn’t _breathe_ and—

“Teddy. _Teddy_.”

The shock of it had been a blessing, Billy realized with a choked breath; it had let him keep distant. Sophia’s death had been a visceral wound deep in his gut, a madness gibbering out of the core of him, burning away anything that made him good or rational or _himself_. This… When Tommy had looked at him and said those words, in that place, he’d been too numb still to really _feel_ it. The grief had been sharp, but the cuts it had made inside of him had been dulled enough that he’d thought he could bear the loss.

Now, here, there was no bearing _this_. Teddy, eyes closed, lips parted on a breath he would never take, somewhere too far out of his reach.

This wasn’t his husband anymore, and it was killing him.

“ _Teddy_ ,” Billy moaned; he dug his nails into the metal rivets, slowly dropping into a graceless crouch on the worn Turkish rug. Slats of light bled through the shutters, cutting across him like bars, and each sob for breath was an agony of struggle. From here, he was nearly level with Teddy’s face, the smooth glass hiding nothing. The profile he’d memorized from a thousand shared beds looked as if it had been carved from granite. If he kissed those bloodless lips, they would surely be hard and unforgiving and nothing at all like the man who used to laugh and catch his mouth in impulsive declarations of love. “No. God. My God.”

His head dropped forward, forehead hot against the cool glass. Tears made Teddy’s face swim and blur; he had to struggle not to sob, shoving one fist against his trembling mouth as his shoulders shook and he stared and stared and stared. Billy was dimly aware of muffled noises beyond the veil of his magic—the others trying to break in to this room—but it was just…

…it was a drone, it was unimportant, it was…

He lifted a hand to touch the glass, and suddenly— _viciously_ —he had to be touching Teddy. Billy staggered up, lurching gracelessly against the coffin. He felt all of his nearly-forty years in the ache of his bones, felt the waves of loss slamming into him again and again, a fresh shock of pain ready once the one before had dissipated. He nearly fell again, knees crumpling under his weight, but he caught himself, heaving in a breath and turning his face away. He hunched his shoulders as if he could curl around his own messy display of grief, mortified at how easily he had come undone.

 _Stand up_ , he told himself. _For fuck’s sake, just_.

He dashed angrily at his tears, scrubbing his cheeks raw, and forced his legs to straighten. Breathing was a challenge—his nose was clogged, runny with snot, and it felt like something was crushing his lungs—but he managed, swaying against the coffin and leaving sticky fingerprints across its glossy surface.

 _Good_ , Billy thought, pressing his palm directly over Teddy’s heart even as he began fumbling for the latch. _His bed shouldn’t be so impersonal; fuck anyone who thought it should_. He worked his thumb under the first metal latch and pulled, the hiss of the stasis chamber emptying loud, welcome. The second latch caught, and Billy swayed against the surge of frustration and rage before it gave way with another syllabant hiss. It was like a puzzle box, his brain and hands clumsy with emotion; it was too much, too fucking much.

And then the final latch was released and the top began to lift on clever hinges, moving up and away. Billy curled his fingers around the lip of the coffin and leaned his weight against its heavy side, staring down through a film of fresh tears as Teddy’s face—without the false barrier between them—came into focus.

“Hey,” Billy murmured, wetting his lips; they tasted like salt. “I… _Hey_.”

His lashes were long and dark against his pale cheeks. His chest should have been moving with the calming, even cadence of his breathing. God, how many times had Billy pressed his face against his husband’s chest and just _listened_ to that even thrum of his heart? How many times had its steady beat set the pace for his own racing thoughts?

He reached out, then hesitated, fingers a breath away from Teddy’s cheek. Teddy was a shapeshifter. Even now, seeing him like this…it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But Teddy had always been so _warm_ , and that spark had always, _always_ , flowed between them, even at their worst moments. Even when Billy had lost himself somewhere in the dark wilderness of grief.

If he touched Teddy now and found him cold and stiff, could he walk away from that moment unbroken?

He pulled his hand back slowly, expelling a shaking breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, curling his fingers tight around the lip of the coffin. “I want to kiss you. You have…you have _no idea_ how much I want to kiss you right now, Teddy. But I’m just— Fuck.”

Billy passed a shaky hand over his eyes, feeling the weakness bubbling up inside of him again. Power pushed restlessly at the limits of his control, seething and rising like the ocean outside his tower. An empathic universe, a mirror reflecting his own turmoil. Wasn’t that what Strange had called it? The world out here didn’t respond the same way, but if he let himself crack wide open like an egg, all that magic would come spilling out and God only knew what he would take down with him as he fell.

“I’m sorry,” Billy finally said again, swallowing against the low sob that wanted to break free. “I’m so fucking sorry about everything, Teddy. I— I _left_ you. I never thought I would, I never _wanted_ to, but when they took our daughter from us, I couldn’t… I couldn’t stay. My mind, I guess, couldn’t stay. It was.” Too much. Too Goddamned much. “Hard. It was too hard, seeing her. Seeing _that_. Knowing I’d never—”

Tears again, hot on his lashes, this time for the loss they’d shared. For their _daughter_. “She loved us _so much_ , and knowing I’d never— All those _years_. All her years were stolen from us, and I couldn’t… And now, _you_ , and I.” His head dropped forward, tears falling; he didn’t have the strength to check them. He was old. He was ancient. He was a broken man who’d once been powerful, who’d once been loved, who’d once been _feared_.

The Avenger’s fourth deadliest enemy. If he touched his husband’s cool skin now, the last pieces of him would crack apart and blow away and Kate’s words would be like some sort of prophecy. A _curse_. “No,” Billy breathed, squeezing his eyes shut against the truth of it. “No, no, _no_ , I refuse, I…”

And,

“Teddy, I can’t _do this_ without you.”

He looked up, seeing his own face reflected back. There were lines around his eyes and mouth. His beard had streaks of silver. His shoulders were rounded forward in defeat. He looked in his eyes and saw Kang there—once-Nate—tearing down everything he’d once tried to build. Without Teddy, how could he possibly keep himself from going down a similar road?

“I won’t,” Billy said, focusing past his reflection to study Teddy’s face. “I _won’t_ do this without you.”

His grip tightened as he levered himself up, straightening. The decision was like a balm of Gilead: once the words were spoken, the grief folded back in on itself, making way for _plans_. There weren’t many options open to him. Foley could have brought Teddy back if he’d been called right away, but that was past them now: healing, even Omega-level healing, wasn’t going to be what he needed. And as for his own powers…

Too dangerous. Too many ways it could all go wrong. Too many ways he could bring _Teddy_ back wrong, which was even worse.

But there was one option left open to him. There was one _promise_ left unfulfilled. He just needed the stomach to see it through.

“It’s going to be okay,” Billy said, passing his hand over his face again, scrubbing at his eyes. They felt bleary and were no doubt bloodshot all to hell, but. _But_. He was in control of his own grief now; he was going to bring Teddy _back_ and damn the consequences. “It’s going to be fine. I will make it fine.”

He rubbed his palms against his jeans and reached out to pull the stasis chamber shut again. This time, his hands barely shook as he latched Teddy in, eyes locked on his face. He was dead, but soon he wouldn’t be. He just had to _remember_ that, had to ( _the sound of her neck breaking, like a pencil snapped in two; the sight of Teddy’s still face and the fear of his cold, dead skin_ ) keep it all in mind as he faced…whatever it was he would have to face.

Whatever it was _they_ had to face, Billy silently amended, turning to stare down Brandon’s crumpled body, tangled and inert as a marionette without its master.

 _Don’t think like that. Not right before going to see_ him.

He wet his lips and lightly pressed his palm against the glass, right over Teddy’s still heart again. Then he pushed away, moving silently across the floorboards to crouch at Brandon’s head. There would have to be three of them, Billy knew: that’s how these sorts of magics worked. Three of them tied to Teddy in some key way. It could have been him and Nate and Eli—the three who formed the Young Avengers with Teddy—but Nate was lost to them and Eli would never agree to this. It could have been Teddy’s mother, Billy, and their daughter—but no, he couldn’t even think those thoughts.

This was easier, Billy told himself, pressing a hand to Brandon’s shoulder and gripping tight. He watched his face as he fed the magic into him, pulling him awake.

 _Help me bring him back, and I will sign those papers_ , Billy thought, fingers squeezing tight. _I will let you have him, if that’s the way the world has to be in order for Teddy to be in it._

Brandon’s lashes flickered, brushing against his tanned cheeks. Billy sat back on his heels to watch, studying the strong hook of his nose, the dark slash of his brows. Brandon was beautiful the way Teddy was beautiful, at least on the surface. If Teddy had ever let that happen, they would have looked so good together.

He bit the inside of his mouth, warding away jealousy, and waited.

“Ohhhh _fuck_ ,” Brandon breathed after a short time. He turned his head, coughing weakly. His eyes slowly opened. “Wha—” And then, all at once, he was jerking up, lightning at his fingertips.

Billy grabbed his shoulder and shoved him back down, fierce. “Wait,” he said. Then, when Brandon struggled, “ _Wait_. Calm down and _listen_ to me.”

“What the fuck, are you _high_?” Brandon snarled, twisting away. His eyes were wild, darting toward Teddy’s coffin as if…as if what? As if he’d expected Billy to steal his husband’s body? His mouth thinned into a line. “You may have gotten the jump on me before,” he warned, both hands lifting. Electricity forked between his palms, so bright it hurt to look. “But that’s not going to happen again.”

“I’m not going to fight you,” Billy said. He sat back, trying to keep himself from reaching reflexively for his own powers. “I want to _talk_.”

Brandon scowled. “Bullshit. I don’t know what you’re playing at, but—”

Billy spread his hands to show they were empty. His eyes caught Brandon’s and held there; he didn’t bother trying to hide the bloodshot eyes, the silvery teartracks. _Let him see_ , he thought, opening himself up to this man who hated him, knowing he had little other choice. _We’re each a mirror of the other._ “I need your help,” Billy murmured when Brandon seemed to falter.

Dark brows drew together, but the spark was slowly beginning to dim. “I’m not helping you,” Brandon said; there was a hint of a question there, however, under all the bravado. A touch of vulnerability. That had always been the way with him, Billy remembered. “Whatever you’ve got planned, we’re going to fight you, and we’re going to win. It doesn’t matter what it takes.”

“You don’t understand.” Billy reached out slowly—so, so very slowly—watching Brandon’s expression shift and change like quicksilver. The other man tensed but didn’t pull away. His eyes locked on him warily, power flaring between them when Billy’s fingers closed around his wrist. The jolt that went through Billy was incredible; he shivered against it, teeth clenching, and felt himself slowly beginning to sway toward Brandon’s heat. “You love him,” he said, quiet.

“Loved.” Not a denial.

Billy wet his lips. “No,” he said, grip tightening. “ _Love_.” Then, when Brandon didn’t say more, he added, “I want you to help me bring him back.”

The spark winked out. “Oh,” Brandon said. Then, almost immediately, “Okay. Yeah. Okay, I’ll help you.”

He…hadn’t expected this to be so easy. “I should tell you what we’ll have to do first,” Billy warned, pulling away. He folded his hands in front of him, practically _itching_ with eagerness to begin, but he needed to do this right. He needed to _warn_ him, so there were no questions later, when they were hip-deep in it and every doubt could mean their lives. “It isn’t going to be safe or easy. Three of us who have close ties to Teddy will have to—”

But Brandon was waving him silent, already rising to his feet. “Whatever,” he said brusquely. “You can tell me on the way. Whatever it is, I’ll do it; I’m in. I’m all in.” He thrust a hand out, offering Billy help to his feet. The gesture was unexpected, and he hesitated a beat before closing his fingers around his rival’s and letting himself be tugged up.

Brandon’s grip was strong, his palm calloused. When they touched, it felt like a circuit being closed.

“You won’t be able to back out later,” Billy warned, pushing back his sleeves. The silver cuffs—cracked up the sides from the moment he escaped Limbo—winked in the dim light. “Once we’re in, we have to see it through.”

“The man I love is dead.” Neither of them flinched away from that, or each other. It was strange, Billy mused, how loss could put to rest old rivalries. “I can’t even begin to think what a shithole life will be without him. If you can bring him back, I don’t care if you’re the crazy Sorcerer Supreme. I wouldn’t care if you were Galactus and I had to put a bow around the Earth and hand it over on a silver platter. This is _Teddy_ , and he may be good, but _I’m_ not, and if you can bring him back, I’m with you. That’s all there is to it.”

They stood there watching each other for a long, long minute. Then Billy reached out his hand and Brandon clasped it, electricity snaking from the place where they were joined. Sparks fell from their fingers and arced toward the carpet; several feet away, the flickering light reflected off the peaceful face of Teddy’s coffin.

“Okay,” Billy said, sealing the bargain. Whatever came next, they were in it together. “Let’s go bring him back.”

They were gone in a flare of blue light.

**

**Greg**

**

“Hey, shitface: do I gotta tell you again?”

The kid—well over twenty, but Greg had reached the point in his life where anyone young enough to wear skinny jeans without looking like a total reject was a kid—visibly blanched. His fauxhawk was limp around his too-pretty face and bits of metal jangled from the edges of his jacket whenever he moved. WWII, by the looks of it. Axis powers. It went well with his Chucks.

God, hipsters annoyed the crap out of him.

“Yeah, I mean, no. No.” The kid shoved his fingers through his wilted hair and shot Amanda a quick glance. Greg stepped closer, one big fist lifting: that’s all it took to get the skinny hipster moving. “No, I’m gone. It’s cool, I’m gone.”

He didn’t drop his fist. The knuckles were scarred up, impressive. A black thumbnail and too many burns to count sent the message that he didn’t mess around clear enough. “It’ll be _cool_ when you’re _gone_ ,” Greg said, pushing in a half-step.

The kid turned and hightailed it out the door; his Chucks squeaked across cracking linoleum as he hurried down the hall.

“…and don’t let the door kiss your ass on the way,” Greg added, dropping his fist. He was glad he hadn’t had to use it, but there was a part of him that felt almost let down at how easy it had all been. And when he turned to look at Amanda—really took in her wan face and pinched expression—he had to fight the urge to chase the little shit down and really go to town on him. “You okay?” he asked instead, moving toward her.

His baby sister sighed and pushed back dark dreadlocks. She offered a weak smile. “Now that you kicked out my loser ex, yeah. Thanks,” she added, letting him fold her up into a fierce hug. “Christ, I could use a drink.”

“No you couldn’t.” Greg rubbed a warm path up and down her spine. Her hair smelled like cheap cigarettes and cedar from all the beads nested up in the thick mass of dreads.

“No, I couldn’t,” Amanda agreed. She dropped her head against his shoulder, lightly thudding it against his collarbone before she pulled back again. He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Still. Thanks for coming to play white knight. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

Greg shoved his hands into his jeans pockets for want of anything else to do with them. “Yeah, you do,” he countered, rocking up onto the balls of his feet. “You would’ve kicked him in the jewels and gone banging on every door down this hall ‘til someone else tossed him on his ass.”

“True,” she said, then laughed. It was good to hear—it was even better to see the way the exhausted pain just melted away from her too-skinny face, making her look her years again and not like some old, beaten shadow of herself. _Not like Mom_. “Wiser words, brother. Can you stay for dinner?”

He pulled a hand out and checked his watch. “Can’t,” he said. “I’m on the clock in an hour.”

“You’ve got your cell phone,” Amanda pointed out. “If anyone needs anything, they can reach you here as easily as there.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, maybe, but it’d take forever to get out to them. Can’t lose this job, Mandy. It’s better if I’m around the building so I can make it there fast.”

“I wish my super was half as conscientious.” She blew out a breath, studying him with a fond expression. “Well, get on with you, then. Go be _super_. Hey,” Amanda added when Greg’s hand was on the knob. “Can I expect you for the holiday? I’m making your favorites.”

He hesitated, grip tightening. “Depends,” Greg said, working to keep his voice even. “Will our father be there?” He read the answer in her guilty expression. “Sorry,” he added. “Can’t make it.”

“Come _on_. Greg, I had to invite him.” He stepped into the hall and she followed, dreads swinging, colorful beads clacking together. “He’d be all sad and alone in that dingy little hovel if I didn’t.”

Which, Greg mused, pretty accurately described where _he_ would be instead, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he kicked up a corner of his mouth and tugged one of her dreads. “I’ll think about it,” he said, though they both knew he wouldn’t come. Amanda may have been able to make her peace with the man who’d raised them, but he’d learned a long, long time ago that life was too short to let himself be pulled along in any man’s wake.

Especially a man like their father.

He said his goodbyes and headed out of her building. The sun was sinking and a cool wind blew down the avenue, dragging dead leaves and candy bar wrappers in its wake. Greg shoved his hands back into his pockets and began the long walk to his neighborhood. They were some distance apart—the sinking economy sent him farther and farther out into Brooklyn every handful of years, it seemed, as prices in the once-cheap neighborhoods steadily rose—and he wanted to save his Metro swipes for real emergencies. Money, as always, was tight. Too tight.

Greg hooked a left at the cross-street, hurrying as the light flashed in warning. There were a lot of people out tonight. He frowned as he passed by a small knot of them. They were gathered close, faces pinched in worry, voices low. One of them was crying.

No, he realized, turning to walk backwards, more than one. An elderly man lifted his face, streetlights winking on silvery teartracks.

Just one street down, a girl was sitting alone on a bench, bent toward her knees, sobbing quietly.

 _What the hell_? Greg stopped, staring at the girl. He felt the impulse to sit next to her, put a hand on her shoulder, but he squashed that quickly. He was a big guy, and he knew he looked meaner than he was. That was a good way to freak her out. Still, he made an awkward move in her direction before veering away, shoulders hunching against the conflicting impulses until he could no longer hear her crying. By then, he’d stumbled into a knot of men arguing in Arabic. One of them was gesturing to his cell phone—he was green about the (literal) gills and stricken.

“Okay, seriously,” Greg said, coming to a stop. “What the hell happened?”

“Didn’t you hear?” The kid by his elbow couldn’t be more than nine, but he held himself as if he were eons older. He had huge black eyes and the faint impression of gills on his long neck—the mutant guy’s son, then. “There was an attack on the Avengers.”

Greg tilted his head. “Well, okay,” he said, “but the Avengers get attacked nearly every—”

“The Captain was killed in action.”

His words stumbled to a stop. For the first time in a very, very long time, Greg Norris had no idea what to say.

The boy kept going gravely. “Reports are all mixed up, but some people were filming it from below. There were definitely Skrulls involved and the Captain definitely died. The footage of his fall is all over the internet.”

“Jesus.” Greg swiped a hand over his face. His fingers were trembling, he realized dimly. “And we’re _sure_ he’s dead?”

“Yeah. The footage— Yeah.”

The boy’s father edged closer, saying something in Arabic; his son twisted around to reply in the same language. Greg moved away, sensing the older man’s unease, lifting his hands as if to say, _Hey, it’s cool, I’m on my way_. The broken and badly set nose, the scars, the close-shaved head and threadbare coat and broad set of him never failed to make people ill at ease. He could have been handing out Girl Scout cookies and people would cross the street to avoid him. It was just the way the world worked.

“Thanks, kid,” he called over his shoulder. “Uh, _shukran_.”

“ _Al'afw_!” the kid called back.

He tried not to let himself think about what he’d heard as he veered toward the nearest Metro station—fuck walking home tonight of all nights—and headed down the filthy steps. There were girls huddled together on the last step into the station, arms around each other, crying silently. There was a middle-aged man squinting at his datapad, thumbing through the news with a thunderstruck expression. Everywhere he looked, people were _mourning_ the Captain.

Teddy. They were mourning _Teddy_ , and God, what the hell was he supposed to do with that?

Greg paced to the end of the station, away from the small knots of shared grief, feeling too big for his skin and all of sixteen years old, all at the same time. He hadn’t thought about those years in, fuck, ages. The Captain was _the Captain_ , leader of the Avengers. It was always so easy to lose the tenuous connections between him and the boy who used to love him.

But now… Now, when he closed his eyes, all he could see was Teddy’s face. Young, so young, flushed up to his row of silver earrings, laughing too hard at something Greg had said. He could see the way he looked up through his lashes, then away quickly, afraid of being caught. He could see the elegant slouch of his body on the threadbare old couch as Greg’s parents screamed at each other in the kitchen and Amanda wailed in her crib and the entire filthy tableau crept up and made Greg want to start screaming himself, or punching, or just _running_ as far and as fast as he could—

Until Teddy lightly knocked their shoulders together, smiling that smile of his. Until he pulled Greg out of the dark places he found himself, too bright and young and beautiful to be believed.

 _That_ was dead. _That_ was gone from the world.

Greg slumped onto the orange bucket seat as the train began to trundle forward, knees on his elbows and head in his hands, lost in memory and years-old pain.

He went so far, so deep, that he nearly missed his stop. “Shit,” Greg hissed, lurching up. He stumbled to slam his shoulder between the closing doors, shoving them open with all his (not-inconsiderable) strength. The station this far out was nearly empty, trash spilling out of the cans and the smell of rotting shit lingering on the grimy walls. Greg shook himself off, straightening his jacket, and jogged up the steps toward the street above. It was dark when he reached the top, sirens wailing somewhere not too far away. Bars covered every visible window and most of the doors he passed. There weren’t any knots of kids or women or elderly out in this neighborhood. Just a half-starved dog limping down the cracked sidewalk and a strung-out man whispering up to the stars. Greg skirted around him on his way up the stairs, looking around carefully before pulling out his keys.

He let himself in quickly and shut the door behind him, making sure the lock caught. There was a security camera trained on him in the small vestibule, but its red light was off—the building owner wouldn’t give him the parts he needed to repair it, so it was just for show, now.

Greg let himself in through the second set of doors and headed down the hall he kept meticulously clean toward the rear steps. He checked his phone as he hurried down, thumbing it off Mute. No messages, and he was early for his shift. That gave him some time to shower and read up on the news and wrap his head around this, he figured. Should he send the Avengers a card or flowers or whatever? Would any of them even have a clue who he was? Would they care?

Doubtful. Very, very doubtful.

He blew out a breath as he jumped down the last step into the short basement hallway, where the building’s laundry room and boiler were. The trash room was at the far end of the hall, the chutes from all six floors feeding down to the same place. He’d have to haul bags out tomorrow morning, but for now he passed it by and let himself into his own small apartment—close enough to the chutes that he could hear bags of trash tumbling by some wakeful nights, but so cheap it hadn’t even occurred to him to turn his nose up at it.

Greg kicked the door shut and reached behind him to draw the locks. He leaned back against the door in the darkness and let out an unsteady breath—eyes closed, head tipped back, feeling the confusing weight of loss and memory circle around him. God, he wanted a drink.

But no. No, that wasn’t going to happen.

He sighed and reached up to rub his brow. “Shower,” he said, pushing away from the door. He got three full steps into the room before he realized he wasn’t alone.

“Hi, Greg,” the mad Sorcerer Supreme said. He was sitting on Greg’s couch, next to one of the Avengers. The pretty one with the stripe of white in his hair and the killer smile. The dim light from the clock washed over Billy Kaplan-Altman’s face, making it sinister. “We were hoping you could help us with something.”

**

**Loki**

**

Loki straightened in his throne as Billy (good old Billy) led the others through the massive doors and into the empty hall. The feasting hall in Asgard had once been filled to the brim with proud warriors and drunken boasts. His brother’s laugh had echoed up to its high ceilings and his father had whispered his wisdom down into its very stone.

The stone was cracked, now, and the only laughter was the caw of crows. But wisdom was still whispered here, in its own fashion, and Loki Liesmith was _very_ pleased to at last have visitors.

“There are three of you, I see: that is good. You remember our lessons, Billy.”

Billy came to a stop at the foot of the dais, looking up at him with a flat expression. Guarded to the teeth. The man at his right shoulder’s jaw was clenched as if he were barely keeping his own words in check. The man at his left just looked overwhelmed.

“Let me guess,” Loki continued, leaning forward indolently. “A love of Teddy’s past. You representing his present. And there by your side, ready to rip my heart from my chest—could that be his future? Are you really so ready to hand over your husband to a handsome stranger, Billy?”

The dark-haired boy—Brandon; of course, he recognized them all—startled and shot Billy an incredulous look. The other, Greg, just watched Loki, eyes never leaving him. Smart man.

“What the hell, Billy?” Brandon began, but he bit back his words when Billy gestured for him to be quiet, light catching off silver cuffs. A score of glittering black eyes watched that silver glint; a score of black wings rustled fitfully.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to bring Teddy back,” Billy said incautiously. Loki opened his mouth to say as much, but Billy rushed on, brows knitting, “ _Whatever it takes_.”

Ah. Well. That was…an interesting proposition. “I do owe you a favor, now that I recall,” Loki began.

“You do.”

“But this comes to a higher price than the favor I owe.” He let the words hang between them before breaking the silence with a grin. “You are lucky I still consider you friend.”

Greg half lifted his hand, as if they were kids in a classroom. “Someone’s going to have to explain all this to the schmoe with the minimum wage job. I get that we’re trying to bring Teddy back, and I’m all for it. You can stop looking at me like that,” he added, casting Brandon a dirty look before his gaze zipped back to Loki. “I’m _on board_. But. What exactly are we planning?”

“You’re not _planning_ , which is very familiar; where do I remember that from?” Loki traced a rune in the air and a crack appeared in the floor.

A _star_.

It pushed down and away, revealing glittering darkness, like oil-slicked night. “Hmm, I’m _trying_ to remember what this reminds me of, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…” He hid a wide grin behind a fist.

“We’re going into the realm of the dead to bring Teddy back,” Billy said. “We’re all three connected to him; that’s important. We’ll find him in those connections. Past, Present, and Future.” He was chewing on his bottom lip, staring into the yawning darkness. Then, “Whatever it takes.”

“Is it…safe?” Greg asked. Brandon snorted.

Loki leaned forward, green cape settling around his skinny shoulders. Seeing Billy again almost made him miss the slight weight of young skin and bones. “Whatever gave you the impression that any of this was _safe_? Don’t forget, Billy,” he added in a singsong as the three crowded around the dark star, the _doorway_. He could feel the fabric of the universe trying to knit itself around the wound—only the combined powers of all the Asgardian heroes (his mother, his father, his _brother_ ) he’d killed and consumed gave him the power to force it so wide. “Never look back. Otherwise, you may find yourself just another Orpheus—and there are more than enough Maenads just waiting for a chance to rip you apart.”

Billy was pale, but he set his jaw, nodding jerkily. He stepped through the portal. One by one, his little sheep followed.

Loki gestured; the door closed. The chamber was silent for a breath.

And then, quiet, in a rasp as soft as a rat’s nails over stone, the crows began to caw.

 

**

**End Part One**

**

 

“You walked in front of me,  
pulling me back out  
to the green light that had once  
grown fangs and killed me.  
I was obedient, but  
numb, like an arm  
gone to sleep; the return  
to time was not my choice.  
By then I was used to silence.  
Though something stretched between us  
like a whisper, like a rope:  
my former name,  
drawn tight.  
You had your old leash  
with you, love you might call it,  
and your flesh voice.  
Before your eyes you held steady  
the image of what you wanted  
me to become: living again.  
It was this hope of yours that kept me following.  
I was your hallucination, listening  
and floral, and you were singing me:  
already new skin was forming on me  
within the luminous misty shroud  
of my other body; already  
there was dirt on my hands and I was thirsty.  
I could see only the outline  
of your head and shoulders,  
black against the cave mouth,  
and so could not see your face  
at all, when you turned  
and called to me because you had  
already lost me. The last  
I saw of you was a dark oval.  
Though I knew how this failure  
would hurt you, I had to  
fold like a gray moth and let go.  
You could not believe I was more than your echo.”  
— **Orpheus (1)** by Margaret Atwood

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [She's like the Swallow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025538) by [Xander_The_Undead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xander_The_Undead/pseuds/Xander_The_Undead)




End file.
